


Bread and Circuses

by Safiyabat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Sam, Child Abuse, Child Death, John Winchester Being an Asshole, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:01:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: When Sam is taken by a gladiator-obsessed cult in Idaho, he has nothing to rely on but his wits and his fellow prisoners to get him out.</p><p>BREADandCIRCUS_title</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Feels Like The First Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2492006) by [Safiyabat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat). 



> Special thanks to my artist, LJ user Majestic_duxk, and to my wonderful beta elwarre.

“I’m not doing it.” Sam crossed his arms across his chest and sat down on the bed. “This is ridiculous. I’m not going to be bait for your half-cocked hunt.”

Dean winced and turned his face away as their father turned around. A flash of guilt ran through Sam, but only a flash. He knew his brother hated it when he resisted John. “I know you didn’t just defy me, boy,” their father growled, molars grinding. “People are dying.”

“And you’re just chomping at the bit to make sure I’m one of them. Just shoot me. It’ll save time.”

He was expecting the crack to his jaw. “There’s no room for cowards in this army, boy,” John spat. “You’ll do your job.” Someday he would die – probably very soon – and get buried, and then eventually some archaeologist would dig up his skeleton and think he’d been a boxer or something. He focused on that image, on the idea of a scientist poking at the bones of a fifteen year old kid and coming to all the wrong conclusions.

“Good thing I didn’t enlist,” Sam retorted. “You can call me a coward all you want. I’m still not going out there and shaking my ass in some mall so you can get me killed. You want me dead, fine, but be a man and do it yourself.”

“Sammy, come on, man,” Dean tried. “You’re gonna be fine. Dad and me, we’re gonna be right behind you.”

“Shut it, Dean.” John’s smile was a grim, wicked gash in his face. “Don’t ‘convince’ him, it’s not like he’s got a choice in this. You may be too selfish to get up off your ass and do something for other people, boy, but the rest of us at least know what’s important.”

“Who’s selfish?” Sam bit out. “You’re the one sacrificing other people’s lives – my life, Dean’s life – for your stupid revenge crusade.”

Another crack, and he might have whiplash from that one. “You’re going to do your job if I have to drag you through that mall on a goddamn leash,” the hunter seethed. “She gave her life for yours and this is how you repay her?”

“You call this a life?” Sam shot back.

John made no answer, just picked him up bodily, slung him over his shoulder and stuffed him into the Impala. Sam fought but there wasn’t much he could do from this angle. The growth spurt everyone kept telling him was coming “any day now” hadn’t hit and he was still just an undersized, skinny kid with oversized feet and no leverage. The best he could do was maybe to knee his dad in the face.

He was forced into the shotgun position and strapped in, with the bonus fun of being cuffed to the door besides. He could feel his face beginning to bruise, but it didn’t matter. His father stormed off toward the truck while Dean threw himself into the driver’s seat. “You can’t say shit like that, Sam,” he growled. “And you know it.”

“Yeah, I realize actually engaging my brain is a cardinal sin.” He snorted.

“Jesus, Sam, no wonder he doesn’t –“ He bit his lip.

“What, trust me? Give two shits if I live or die?”

“Stick around!” Dean roared. “Dad doesn’t stick around because he can’t take your whining, all right? All you do is complain about not having a normal life and you can’t lower yourself to appreciate everything he does to keep us safe –“

“Dean!” Sam interrupted, tugging at the cuff on his wrist as he tried to turn around. “You can’t be serious. You’re driving me off to offer me up to some bunch of cultist perverts and you’re trying to pretend like he’s keeping us safe? On what planet is that keeping us safe? He is literally killing us.”

Dean slammed his hand against the dashboard. Sam flinched back. “Damn it, Sam, if you say another goddamn word this entire trip you won’t have to wait for some damn cult to kill you. Do I make myself clear?”

Dean wouldn’t kill him, but Sam sank into silence anyway. He didn’t need to antagonize his brother any further. He stared out the window instead, hoping that the cool glass would bring some relief for his aching face.

The drive to the mall took forty-five minutes, because sleazy motels didn’t occupy the same space as bright shiny malls. Sam didn’t speak during the ride. He let Dean’s silent-treatment music wash over him instead. It wasn’t like “Creeping Death” was a bad song, and unlike most of the crap forced into his ear canals it had been recorded after his birth if only barely. He didn’t honestly mind it so much, not the first few times in a row anyway. By the time that they got to the mall he kind of wanted to jump around screaming to the weird cult that they could just fucking take him already if they would just play something else, anything else, but he didn’t. Mostly because he knew the cult wasn’t there.

“You know what the plan is, boy?” John asked him. Always “boy,” never “Sam.” It was like his father had forgotten that he’d given Sam a name.

“It doesn’t matter,” he retorted, tugging against the cuff out of reflex. “They’re not going to do it here. Did you not read the case histories?”

John got red in the face. “Sam,” Dean sighed wearily. “Don’t tell Dad how to do his job, all right? He’s been doing it almost as long as you’ve been alive.”

“Okay, but not a single one of these kids has been taken from a populated area like a mall. They were all taken when they were isolated, alone. Not from a freaking ritzy shopping mall when they had freaking mall security following them around like flies on –“

John’s hand gripped his already bruised jaw. “I have had enough of your lip today!” he growled.

“What are you going to do, John?” the teen ground out in response. “Kill me?”

His father pushed him back into the seat. “Get your ass into that mall. And you walk every inch of it until they come for you.”

He rolled his eyes and let Dean unlock the cuffs. He could fight it, but he wasn’t up for making a scene. Maybe he was, he didn’t know. Maybe getting the police involved would be the best thing. Maybe then Dad would get the help he needed. But… Dean wouldn’t. Dean would hate him forever if he got Dad sent up for child abuse, or whatever else Dad got arrested for. And they’d find the arsenal in Dean’s car – the one Sam had been handcuffed to – not in Dad’s. That was smart thinking on Dad’s part. John might be an asshole and he might be killing his sons, but he wasn’t stupid.

So he shuffled his way into the mall, a higher-end mall in a ritzy suburb that probably had at least as many security guards and cameras as it did customers. Sam stood out here, in his thrift store hand-me-downs and his bruises. He couldn’t even pretend to blend in the way he could in other places. From the moment he set foot in that place he could feel eyes on him, and not because of the cult. A sales associate walked up to him every few yards and asked if he needed help. They smiled wide, fake smiles and they were polite, but he knew what they were really about. He heard the occasional subtle blip of a two-way radio being switched on, so he knew that security had gotten involved too.

And he had been made to go in unarmed, practically naked. You couldn’t be bait if you could defend yourself. Sam thought it was a bit of an oversell – after all, it wasn’t like they were going to strip him before putting him in the back of a van or anything – but John had insisted. Sam was pretty sure that his father had reasons beyond making it look “real.” Assuming that the cult did strike, Sam wasn’t intended to come back from this one.

Nothing happened in the mall. Nothing was ever going to happen in the mall. Sam walked every inch of the mall twice, just as his father wanted, before he was approached by his brother. “You can come back to the car now,” he said in disgust. “Come on. Security’s getting antsy.”

“No shit,” Sam spat. He followed along anyway, seething.

He slouched back out to the car and slouched into the shotgun position, taking a little bit of admittedly juvenile pleasure in slamming the heavy door shut behind him. John, as seemed to be his default today, got red in the face but then turned around and got into his truck. Dean got in the car. “Do you have to antagonize him, Sammy?”

“I didn’t say a fucking word, Dean.”

“Exactly. You couldn’t have apologized for mouthing off?”

“He’s doing his best to get me killed and I’m supposed to apologize to him for it?”

Another seven repetitions of “Creeping Death” later they’d arrived back at the motel, not another word exchanged between the brothers.

Sam stalked his way into the motel room, intending to sit down and do some homework since he hadn’t gotten killed today, but his father grabbed his shoulder. “You want to tell me what that was all about?” he snarled.

“What, wandering aimlessly through the mall?” Sam sneered. “Pretty sure that’s exactly what you ordered me to do.”

“They didn’t take you. Why?”

“Ask them. Oh wait – maybe it was because they don’t take any of their victims from well-populated areas. Or maybe it was because they weren’t going to grab someone who was already being followed by two thugs and a whole mall full of rent-a-cops.”

“You watch your tone with me, boy.” John’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

“You seriously going to pretend it’s not true?” Sam scoffed. “I stood out like a sore thumb in there. I would have even if you hadn’t marbled up my face nice and good. None of the other kids got taken from a mall, but no. You wanted me to get taken from a mall so you made me parade around there like some kind of goddamn show pony.”

“Freddie Milsom was taken from a mall,” Dean countered.

“Aw, Dad let his golden boy actually see the case material. I’m impressed.” Sam knew he shouldn’t lash out at Dean for being Dad’s favorite, but he’d gotten himself worked up by now and he couldn’t stop. He could hear his pulse in his ears. “Actually, no. Freddie Milsom, the last victim to be found dead, wasn’t taken from the mall. Security footage shows him leaving the mall with two of his friends, both of whom made it home just fine. He could only have been taken between the time that he got off the stupid goddamn public bus and his stupid goddamn house.”

“And how would you know that, boy?” John gave him a shake.

“I hacked the police report,” Sam tossed back. “While you were pissing and moaning about what a waste of space my schoolwork was and what a disappointment I am as a son, I hacked the police reports on all of the victims and I know goddamn well that the whole stunt with the mall was a waste.”

“Then why were you being such a whiny little bitch about it?” Dean demanded. “Why’d you make Dad rough you up?”

“He’s got no right to force me to be bait!” Sam heard his voice rise in tone and hated it. “He’ll find some other way to force me into getting killed for this and it’s stupid. I’m not willing to die for this.”

“You owe it to your mother –“ his father shouted.

Sam shouted him down. “The hell I do. The only thing I owe her is to live the life she gave me instead of wasting it on some asinine quest.” He shoved past the senior Winchester and through the motel room door. “I’m going out.”

Dean moved to grab him, but Sam easily skated out of the way and avoided restraint. He was very certain that he didn’t imagine the way his father reached out to stop Dean’s reaching him. It would have been nice if he could convince himself that John recognized his need for space and was forcing Dean to respect it.

He fought the urge to stuff his hands into his pockets and kept his head up as he shuffled his way down the side of the road. Snow hadn’t come to the area yet but it couldn’t be far off, and his thin clothes didn’t do much to ward off the chill. That probably wasn’t a bad thing; he needed to cool down. His dad had this ability – it had to be some kind of mutant superpower or something – to make his blood absolutely boil.

It was just… okay, he got that Dad had lost his wife and he was grieving. He would grieve forever. Maybe he didn’t “get” that, he didn’t ever want to truly understand that kind of pain, but he understood that it was a thing and that it was a motivating factor for his father. He had loved their mother. But what Sam just couldn’t wrap his head around why their mother’s death needed to define every aspect of her sons’ lives. His mother was dead, and that was bad. Sam had never known her. Why did her death mean that Sam was never allowed to have a stable roof over his head, or go to school on a consistent basis? Why did their mother’s fate mean that Sam had to die before he was twenty-five? Hell, before he was sixteen if his father had anything to say about it? He’d never known Mary Winchester, but there was no way she could be the saint John and Dean insisted that she be venerated as if she would have wanted her sons to not know where their next meal was coming from or to have to know how to steal a car before they could legally drive one or the fact that both of her sons were drinking before they hit double digits. Poverty was nothing to be ashamed of if there was a legitimate reason for it, but their father had been part owner of an actual business before Mary died. He’d just thrown everything away to go tearing across the country putting Mary’s sons in all kinds of danger and then pretending that it was about “keeping you safe.”

He rubbed a hand against his aching jaw. Yeah, he felt safe all right.

He felt eyes on him almost as soon as he left the motel room, but he took no real notice of them. He assumed that they belonged to his father, or possibly to his brother. Why they thought that the cult was going to be striking in Preston over any other place in Idaho, or Wyoming, or Utah, was beyond Sam. There was no pattern at all to the disappearances, none whatsoever, and even less of a pattern to how or when the bodies of the missing boys showed up again. Sometimes a boy who had been missing for over a year would be discovered in Utah when he’d disappeared from a town in Wyoming that had been three hours away from the dump site; sometimes a boy would only be missing for a month and get dumped near the town he’d been taken from. The only consistency Sam could see was that the boys who had been gone longer had been in better physical condition than the ones who were killed after only a short time in captivity.

He saw a van coming up the road and he tensed up. His family was around to keep him from actually getting taken, right? They’d objected so strongly to him getting out in any way, whether it was going to go stay with Pastor Jim or running off to Flagstaff. They weren’t going to let him go to a cult. Not really. Right?

He took off running across the field on his left. He didn’t care if there had been cows there, he just made sure he didn’t slip in anything they’d left behind. He wasn’t going to let himself get taken. Yeah, sure, the cult (if it even was a cult and not just one or two creepy serial killers) needed to be gotten rid of, but that didn’t mean that it needed to be him taking them out. This was something that the police were for, something that a large force of actual professionals who got a paycheck and real training and had a proper education and had someplace to go and decompress at the end of the day so they weren’t literally doing the job all day, every day with no goddamn time off. It wasn’t a job for an alcoholic with a vendetta and two teenagers.

Sam could run. He could run fast, and he knew it. There was something that he couldn’t outrun, though. He felt something pierce his skin and he fell to the ground, unable to move. He heard footsteps on the crunchy, dry soil behind him before the darkness closed in and he knew no more.

He woke up sometime later; there was no real way of knowing how long. Even before his eyes opened he could tell that he wasn’t where he had been. He lay on his back on a cold metal table – like an exam table at a vet’s office or maybe in a morgue – instead of on his face in the mud. He breathed vaguely musty indoor air instead of clean mountain air. And oh yeah – he was naked.

“Open your eyes, boy.” The speaker stood somewhere near his chest, on the right side. She had an accent; he supposed it was a British accent if what he saw on PBS was anything to go by on the rare occasions he got to choose what he watched. That didn’t mean anything though – she could be faking it. “I heard your breathing start to change, we all know you’re awake.”

Well, crap. He could try to pretend to go back under but he didn’t think the woman would fall for it. He opened his eyes, wincing as the light triggered a headache. The room definitely looked like a medical office – almost certainly a veterinary office, given the anatomical diagram of a horse on the wall. The woman speaking to him was maybe five foot two, with iron-gray hair in a “sensible” haircut and dark, beady eyes. “You’re the cult,” he identified, looking at the two men in the room.

“We’re a community of worshippers,” she corrected him. “You can consider us a cult if you wish; you can consider us fish if it suits you to do so. None of that matters. What does matter, young man, is that you understand your place here and you do so very quickly. You are a slave. I own you. You will train. You will eat. You will follow the orders of the overseers. You will do what you are told to do when you are told to do it and that is all.” She ran a hand over his body.

He drew back, noticing for the first time that something had been painted onto his skin. “Don’t touch me, perv,” he growled.

She didn’t show any emotion as she raised her hand and slapped his face. As blows went, it wasn’t much. It didn’t even compare to any of the hits he’d taken that day, or the last time he’d been conscious anyway. “I own you,” she repeated. “I am entitled to touch you in any way that I want. It is in my best interest to ascertain your physical condition – all of your physical condition. A very thorough physical examination was conducted while you were unconscious – it seemed easiest to get your cooperation that way, and I must say that you seem to be in the best shape of any of our fighters.”

“I’m not a fighter,” Sam shot back. “I’m just a high school kid.”

She slapped his face again. “Not anymore. Not ever again. The sooner that you reconcile your mind to the fact that you will never leave this arena alive the more comfortable you will be while you’re here.” Cold, beady eyes flicked up to the men in the room. “Bring him to the arena. It’s time to present him to our Master.”

Well that sounded ominous. He had two options here. He could fight, or he could go along and try to figure out what was going on here. Everything in him wanted to fight. He was naked and he hadn’t started out that way, there were strange people grabbing at him, he’d been kidnapped. He was a fast kid and he was strong. He might make it.

Of course, the guys grabbing his arms and tugging him to the ground had Tasers. Maybe he could outrun them. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he could get out of this building. Where was he? The fact that he’d been knocked out for an unknown period of time meant that he could be anywhere by now. He’d been trained in survival in most environments but that assumed things like clothes, and shoes, and a knife because you always carried at least one knife on you because what if you encountered a shapeshifter at the Laundromat or a werewolf in the school cafeteria and you needed to cut its heart out right then and there, son and he was so screwed right now because John hadn’t let him bring his knife when he’d sent him out to offer himself up to these very people and he hadn’t grabbed it on his way out the door in his rush to get away from his father and now here he was in the clutches of this gaggle of freaks with no knife and no clothes and –

\- and now was not the time to panic. He swallowed the rising bile in his throat as he allowed himself to be “encouraged” along a wide hallway. The place, he realized after a moment, looked a lot like a horse barn or maybe a county fair arena. He bit his lip, trying to focus on the number of steps it took to get between the treatment room and the arena.

Arena was the only possible word for this space. He was led up to the entrance to a space, where a spotlight focused on the doorway. The floor looked like a mix of sawdust and dirt and maybe hay. The space was ovoid, lined with bleacher-style seats, and he could hear a few people murmuring. “What the hell?” he whispered to himself.

“No talking,” one of his guards growled, while the other one punched him in the side.

They made their entrance, and as soon as they walked into the arena the spectators fell silent. The audience area was dark and the spotlight was right on Sam, so he couldn’t make out many details but he thought he could sense maybe fifty people there. Fifty people, all staring at his naked and painted body being marched across a huge expanse of space toward a giant stone altar.

The altar was covered in symbols. As Sam got closer he thought he could recognize some of them as being Greek, but that by no means covered everything he saw on the table. He forced his breathing to even out. They weren’t going to sacrifice him. Not right now, anyway. All of the dead boys that had been found, they’d been kept for at least a month before they’d been slaughtered. He didn’t feel badly enough to have been out for a month. His muscles would have atrophied. He’d read that in a book somewhere or something.

The short, vaguely British woman behind him began to chant. Sam tensed up. The language sounded familiar to his ears, but not familiar enough that he understood it. It was almost like listening to a Beatles album on reverse – things sounded like they should be familiar but everything was just wrong enough that he couldn’t –

Except he could. After a few moments of listening to the chanting and the babbling he picked up a few words, here and there. Then it became easy. John Winchester’s quest for whatever had destroyed his wife had demanded that Sam study Latin even before he knew why they had no home and moved every six weeks on average, but his single-minded obsession limited his son’s study to medieval and ecclesiastical Latin. Cicero would have been fine if he’d been writing about exorcisms, but since he was just writing about politics and history he was useless to a hunter and therefore strictly forbidden. The only people Sam had ever heard speak Latin had also limited their study, or at least limited their display of knowledge in Sam’s presence.

This woman was speaking an older, cleaner, more perfect Latin. She was speaking classical Latin. Sam couldn’t quite wrap his head around everything – tenses were wildly different and even in English there is a huge difference between you are loved and you will be loved and you would have been loved – but after a while he started to get the gist of what was being said. She was trying to summon something – a god? Yes, definitely a god. Charon, he identified. She was trying to summon Charon.

Something was poured over his head. He bit his lip to keep from shrieking when he recognized that it was blood. It was cold blood, too – refrigerated, probably had some kind of anti-coagulation agent added, but it was blood. He didn’t know whose blood it was, but it was in his hair and running down his spine and running down his chest and getting into his eyes. He took his hands and wiped the mess out of his eyes. What if the blood was contaminated? Could he get some kind of disease by someone else’s blood getting poured into his goddamn eyes? He didn’t think it worked that way, but not a lot of people are inclined to rationality when they’ve just had blood poured over their heads.

The chanting only stopped when the blood poured off of his body and hit the ground. Then the altar began to glow softly. The paint on Sam’s body glowed too, and he cut back on an hysterical scream. His body was not supposed to glow. “Lord Charon,” his “owner” intoned. “I present to you my latest offering. I invite you to mark him for your own.”

A mass began to take shape before the altar. Whatever it was, it didn’t become visible, not completely. It had a vague shape, and it was darker than the space around it, but even years later Sam wouldn’t be able to say for any certainty what it had looked like. It was simply a cold, dark, amorphous mass that chilled the air around it so thoroughly that Sam thought he might get frostbite just from proximity.

**I cannot mark this one**. Charon’s voice wasn’t so much a sound as a sensation, reverberating into the center of Sam’s very being. **Others mark him already. I cannot gainsay them**. There was a vague sensation of motion, as though the being was looking from Sam to the woman behind him. T **his should not impede his ability to participate in your games**.

“Marked by others?” Sam repeated, before his world exploded in a world of burning agony. He screamed as electricity ripped through him.

**I cannot read more. It is hidden. Nevertheless, it is immaterial. It means that I cannot touch your soul when you die, that is all. I am sorry**. The deity picked Sam up off of the ground, setting him back on his feet.

“But he is a worthy sacrifice?” Sam’s “owner” pressed.

**There are no flaws in that line** , Charon affirmed. The glowing stopped. The mass disappeared. The audience began to whisper excitedly as they got up from their seats and began to file out of the arena.

His “owner” leaned into Sam’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me you were already marked?” she spat.

“Because you shot me full of horse tranquilizers and dragged me to god-knows-where?” he shot back. He had no idea what Charon could have meant by “marked by others,” who those others were or what that could possibly involve. Maybe it had something to do with the filth he’d always felt inside of him, just under the surface. Maybe it had something to do with his father, or his brother.

She stomped onto his foot. “I can see how your face came to be so bruised. Get him cleaned up and put away,” she snapped to the guards. “He’ll join the others tomorrow.”

He found himself escorted back to the treatment room. There was a shower room in the back, and while they watched him he was allowed to wash himself. After having been exposed as he had to an arena full of people, two goons watching him shower was only mildly creepy, so he focused on getting the blood off his body and out of his hair. This might have been the single highest quality shower he’d ever been in, he noticed as he scrubbed. The water pressure was good, and the hot water never seemed to run out.

Whoever did the doctoring in here must need to clean up an awful lot.

Once he had cleaned himself thoroughly – his guards checked, in an inspection that had his cheeks scarlet with shame – he was permitted to towel himself off. He was then issued a loincloth, a thin piece of cotton that really wasn’t more than a couple of flaps of fabric tied together at the hips. It wasn’t intended to do more than cover his bits when he was standing still.

He considered fighting once again. The loincloth was better than nothing, he decided, and he put the garment on. He was going to get no end of shit from Dean when they found him wearing this thing, but as long as this was the only humiliation he got put through after everything he’d already experienced he’d probably be able to get through the teasing.

They led him down two flights of stairs and then through a tunnel. The bricks didn’t look all that new. “You’ve been doing this a while?” he hazarded.

One of the guards shrugged, but gave an almost-imperceptible nod to the other one. “Yeah, sure,” Guard Two told him. “It’s not like it’s a crime for you to know. You’re not going anywhere.”

“You seem pretty sure of that,” he challenged. They had to be going into another building now.

“Kid, we’re in the mountains. No one who’s not part of this has been up this way in a good fifty years, you feel me? You’d freeze to death or fall to your death before anyone could help you – and that’s assuming you got out of the compound first. Face it, kid. This is your life now.” This came from Guard One, who seemed a bit older than Guard Two.

“Has anyone tried?” Sam pressed. “Escaping, I mean?”

“A couple of boys. It happens, sometimes. They don’t get far. Like I said, kid. We’ve been doing this for a while.” They got to a large, thick-looking fire door. Guard One unlocked it.

Beyond the door were more doors, lining a dank corridor lit by a naked light bulb. The doors all looked the same, except for the numbers painted on them. They were steel doors, with small openings for visual access that could only be opened from the outside. The guards led Sam to one of the doors – number thirteen, he noticed wryly and unlocked it.

“Welcome home kid,” Guard Two told him, not unkindly.

Sam was ushered inside. The cell was not large, but it could have been worse. There were two bunks built into the wall. He took the top bunk, burrowing under the scratchy blanket as much for something to cover his body with as for physical comfort. There was a toilet. The light came from a ceiling panel.

He lay back in his bunk and tried to calm himself. It didn’t work. If his father and brother had been concerned for him with the cult and everything, they’d have found him already. They wouldn’t have let him get taken. They wouldn’t have let him get “examined” by whatever quack of a medical professional they had going for them here, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have let him get stripped and paraded naked like a slab of meat for public consumption. Sam was on his own here, and on his own for finding a way out.

It wasn’t a good feeling. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic child physical abuse.

Sam didn’t sleep easily. He didn’t sleep easily at home or what passed for it, he certainly wasn’t going to sleep easily in some dungeon with nothing but a piece of scratchy, coarse wool between himself and the elements. He stared at the ceiling for a while, trying to figure out what he knew. There wasn’t much. Apparently the cult was summoning Charon. Sam was equipped to handle – well, at the moment he was equipped to handle anything that could be slain by wool, thin cotton or naked human genitalia, not that he wanted to explore using his parts as a weapon.

The cult summoned a god. This was beyond anything he thought his father had ever faced, beyond anything Pastor Jim had talked about. He thought he dimly recalled Bobby Singer having some information about gods and how to kill them, back when he’d been holed up there after Dean got lost on a hunt in the Catskills maybe three years ago, but Bobby hadn’t been hugely keen on letting Sam loose in his library at the time. Not after Sam cast a location spell and tried to go running off after his brother….

He forced his mind back to the task at hand. He needed to concentrate if he was going to get himself out of this. He couldn’t count on his father and Dean to get him out, because they wouldn’t even remotely suspect that they were dealing with a god. Even if he could somehow get word to them – how he was supposed to do that he had no idea – they’d never believe him. Dean would laugh at his “overactive imagination.” John – well, John wouldn’t laugh.

And all that assumed that his family was even looking. Oh, Dean might miss him. Maybe. He had a lot of hang-ups about “take care of Sammy” that made him try to muscle his way in when he thought bullies were coming after Sam or something. Maybe he’d be antsy now. But John – John had been very eager to sacrifice Sam to this particular hunt with no idea what was going on, no clue as to what he was fighting. Maybe he wasn’t looking. Maybe he wasn’t interested in getting Sam back.

Or maybe that wasn’t being fair to John. The guy had fought tooth and nail to keep Sam from even getting the slightest hope of getting out of hunting, burning the one college brochure Sam had been stupid enough to bring home right in front of him. He’d vetoed any possibility of Sam moving in with Bobby or Pastor Jim on a long-term basis even when both hunters had urged the solution. If he couldn’t stand the thought of Sam getting away from him by staying with people he knew or getting to a safe and happy life in college, he probably wasn’t going to be all that thrilled with the idea of Sam escaping hunting through a short stint as a slave to a weird pseudo-Roman death cult.

Right?

_He is marked by others already._ Charon’s words came back to his mind unbidden, unwelcome. What did that mean, “marked?” For most people that just meant a hickey or some love bites. Maybe a tattoo. Sam had none of those things. Yeah, sure, Dwayne King had wanted to leave him with a hickey back in Kennewick, but Sam had made it very clear that he didn’t have enough privacy to get away with anything of the sort thank you very much. He was pretty sure that the deity hadn’t been talking about any such thing, especially since Kennewick had been several weeks ago and no marking of any kind had taken place.

Maybe Dad knew. Maybe that was what this was about. Maybe Dad had figured out that Sam was just unclean and this was just a convenient way of getting rid of him. Dean would probably get mad at Dad if he killed Sam outright (maybe, probably, he did think everything Dad did was wonderful so maybe not) but if he was just “lost” while being bait on a hunt? Well then Sam would have died a hero, no better fate, right? Sacrificed for the greater good.

Did Dad know what Charon had meant by “marked?” Had he figured it out? If so, when? He tried to think back to when his father had started to act differently toward him and he couldn’t figure it out. He’d always resented Sam, never had as much use for Sam as he did for Dean. Never taken any pride in Sam, no matter how far he ran or how strong he was or how well he could shoot. It never measured up to Dean’s accomplishments, so Sam learned to value other skills that could be measured in other units than “good job, son.” Which, in turn, only made John angrier. Maybe he’d always known Sam was dirty, though. Maybe that was why Sam could never measure up. Maybe that was why he’d been shunted off now.

Or not. Maybe they were out there looking for him. Maybe they were treating the case of his disappearance just like he was any other missing teenager, any other civilian. Maybe they were acting like his life was worth as much as someone else’s.

He wasn’t going to count on that. He couldn’t afford to.

Trapped underground, in a cell with no windows, he had no way of knowing what time it was or when the sun rose. Someone did start rapping on all of the doors eventually, though. “Rise and shine, girls,” an older, masculine voice demanded. “Time for breakfast.”

He heard the door to his cell unlock, and he tensed for a moment before moving. No one entered, so he hopped down onto the concrete floor and stuck his head out.

A fistful of other boys, all roughly his age, stood more or less to attention outside their cells. All of them wore loincloths basically indistinguishable from Sam’s. Some were bruised. Some had welts on their backs. Others glanced casually at Sam, and he couldn’t decide how he felt about that. “Hey, new guy,” said the one in the cell next to Sam. He had dark skin, close-cropped hair and a few welts. “I’m Miguel.”

“Sam,” he said. Miguel didn’t offer a hand, so Sam didn’t either. “How long have you been here?”

“Hard to say. Probably about three weeks maybe. It all kind of blends together after a while. They tell you anything?”

“No.” He tried to think back to the missing persons reports he’d looked into. Miguel Flores had been reported missing from just outside of Ogden, Utah three and a half weeks ago. He’d been a star football player. “They made me go talk to some god or something but that was it.”

“You talked to Charon?” The guy standing next to Miguel looked excited by the prospect. “That’s so cool! All he did was mark us.”

“What do you mean mark you?” Sam knew he was making a face, but he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t slept and the problem of “marking” was causing logistical and literal headaches for him.

“He didn’t mark you?” Miguel whispered. “That’s kind of a big deal, bro. It’s like… he touches your soul.” He shivered. “It’s not fun. And then he gets your soul when you die.”

“Huh.” Sam twitched his lips. Someone else already had a claim to his soul when he died? Who? And why didn’t he think that was likely to be a very good thing? He opened his mouth to ask another question but the guard at the end of the hallway hollered.

“All right, you maggots, let’s get you to your breakfast. No fraternizing.”

A second guard took a quick headcount. Apparently there were twenty-five boys incarcerated in this wing, including Sam. They moved out in single file, alert adult eyes watching for any infractions.

Sam paid attention to the route to the mess hall. The facility consisted of two long tables where the boys could sit. He noticed that there were enough seats for several more boys than were present at the moment, and that chilled him. “You want to eat up, Skinny Sam,” Miguel advised, sitting beside Sam. “I know you probably don’t feel much like it right now. The whole strange place, strange food, kidnapping thing, right? Plus that exam they give you – not anyone’s idea of a good time, am I right?”

“They knocked me out for that,” he admitted, poking at the eggs on top of his oatmeal. He was kind of afraid that they would poke back.

“Did they really? I guess there’s some fight in you already. Huh. Anyway, you’re going to be training hard and you’ve got to keep your strength up. I don’t care what your sport was, man. You haven’t trained like they’re going to have you training here.” One corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin.

Sam poked at the eggs. “I’ve never been a great eater.” He tried a bite. “So what exactly is this place?”

Miguel’s sidekick – cellmate? roommate? – chimed in. He was shorter than Miguel, shorter than Sam, and he was built like a barn. “Were you very good at history, Skinny Sam?”

He was going to learn to hate that nickname in about six seconds. It was better than “Sammy,” though. “Yeah. I guess. Why?”

“You remember the Romans? Caesar and Caligula and all that?”

Miguel punched him lightly in the bicep. “Caligula was a porno from, like, the seventies, man.”

“He was an emperor too,” Sam admitted, almost absently. The loincloth felt a lot more revealing now. “Tell me it’s not –“

“Oh God no,” the other boy – white-blond, with close-cropped hair and a few scars – shuddered. “I saw that one once with my brother. Had nightmares for weeks, man. No, they don’t seem to want us like that. It’s, uh. Have you seen, um, Spartacus? It’s really old, it has that Sir Laurence Olivier dude in it.”

“We’re gladiators,” Sam surmised, a pit forming in the middle of his stomach.

“That’s the word.” Blondie nodded, folding his lips grimly. “We’re all in training to be gladiators. Only there’s never going to be anyone giving us the thumbs up or anything. When they’re out there it’s just –“

“How long have you been here….” He paused, looking at the guy.

After a moment, Blondie responded. “Scott.”

“How long have you been here, Scott?”

“Six weeks. They picked me up in Logan, Utah.” He hung his head. “They’ve probably stopped looking for me by now.”

“They haven’t.” Sam reached out and put a hand on the other boy’s arm. “My dad – he looks for things just like this. Cults. They haven’t stopped looking for you. They haven’t stopped looking for either of you, okay? And your families aren’t going to.” He made eye contact with both of the others. He didn’t remember seeing Scott’s name among the missing, but he hadn’t seen every police report either. He’d been around enough victims and victims’ families to know more or less how to talk to them, though. “We’re going to get out of this.”

“They’ve been doing this for an awfully long time, Skinny Sam,” Miguel doubted.

“So’s my family.” He offered a smile he didn’t feel. “So. What was your sport?”

“What do you mean?” Scott asked, eyebrows drawing together.

“Everyone who was taken was some kind of athlete – they don’t want weak gladiators, that’s no kind of contest, right?” His mind flashed back to the conversation with Charon, when Sam’s “owner” had been so concerned as to whether or not Sam was a worthy sacrifice. Somehow he didn’t think the use of that word would benefit anyone.

“I played football,” Miguel told him proudly. “Quarterback.”

“Nice,” Scott grinned. “I played soccer.”

“Aw, man. I love soccer. My dad never lets me play.” He slumped a little.

“So what was your sport, then?” the quarterback pressed. “It’s obviously something, you’ve got muscles like rocks, man.”

“Nah, my dad’s just a drill sergeant.” He shrugged.

A bell near the front of the room rang, and Scott and Miguel immediately rose from their seats and raced to line up with the other boys. Miguel patted Sam on the arm. “Come on, man.”

Sam figured that lingering over the eggs and oatmeal was probably not in his best interests. He joined in, abandoning his breakfast and falling into line. The guards – more of them this time – led them out a door on the opposite side of the room than the one they’d entered and through a different maze of corridors until they came to another arena.

It wasn’t the same space they’d been in yesterday. There was no altar, no pervading aura of cold and impending doom. The floor was more dirt than anything else, and the wall was lined with what looked like… “Rattan?” he puzzled, looking up at the items as he lined up with the others.

A guard, middle aged with a slight paunch, punched him in the face. “You will speak when spoken to,” he bellowed.

Sam turned his face with the blow, but he didn’t fall or stagger. He’d had worse, after all – he’d had worse recently – and he wasn’t about to let this bunch of cultist assholes see him hurting.

“First things first,” another guard declared loudly. This one stood in front of the entire row of twenty-five boys and had a whistle. Sam nicknamed him Coach. “Get to running. New Kid – the rules are simple. You run until I blow the whistle. If you stop before I blow the whistle you get punished. Got it?”

He considered kicking the gray-haired man in the nads, but he didn’t think it would benefit him much to do so. After all, he didn’t even know his way around this warren of a place yet. “Yes, sir,” he ground out instead.

The whistle blew. The boys ran. The exercise didn’t seem exceptionally arduous to Sam. It was a workout – he worked up a sweat, sure, but it wasn’t what he would call grueling. He made sure not to outpace the others and stayed in the middle of the pack. Scott and Miguel seemed to be doing okay too. One kid, though – a tall, slender Asian kid, the only East Asian guy in the bunch – seemed to be having a hard time of it. After the first hour he sank to his knees and started retching, becoming violently ill in the center of the track.

Sam slowed down, intending to go help him, but Miguel put a firm hand on his back. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. The message was clear. He wasn’t going to be allowed to help. He kept running.

The kid finished puking and was hauled to his feet as the rest of the boys continued their run. After another forty-five minutes Coach blew his whistle. Sam joined the others in forming a more-or-less orderly cluster around a tall pole. The kid who had been ill did not resist as a guard bound his wrists together on the other side of the pole; he just closed his eyes and bit his full lips in fear.

Sam tried to stretch a little bit, as subtly as he could, while Coach blew his whistle again. He wasn’t the only one; these guys were all athletes after all. “Listen up. This fella stopped running before I blew my whistle.” He pointed at Sam. “Do you know what the penalty is for ending your run before the whistle is?”

Sam felt sick. “No sir.” It hadn’t been the other guy’s fault. He’d just been sick. What was he supposed to do, run and puke at the same time?

“It’s your first day and you haven’t seen this sort of thing before so I’ll let it slide,” Coach declared. “You!” He pointed at a brown-haired boy who’d clearly started his growth spurt early. “What is the penalty for ending your run before the whistle is blown?”

“Ten strokes, sir.” The respondent didn’t sound enthusiastic. He didn’t sound upset either. He just sounded neutral, like he could have been talking about the weather.

Sam turned around. One of the other guards had gone to the wall of rattan, but it wasn’t one of the makeshift weapons that he’d gone after. “Eyes up here, new guy, or it’ll be your turn next,” Coach snarled. Sam turned his eyes back to the front of the crowd.

The guard presented Coach with a bundle of birch sticks. Sam definitely felt his gorge rise again. “One,” he counted, as Coach brought his arm back. A loud crack echoed through the air and the rods landed on the victim’s back. The only other sound was the boy whimpering. Sam didn’t tear his eyes away; he knew the screws had their eyes on him and he needed them to underestimate him, needed that like air if he was ever going to survive this. Still, his peripheral vision told him that different boys were reacting differently to the spectacle. Some stared straight ahead – not even really watching if they could avoid it. Some seemed to want to watch. And others - well, the thing about a loincloth is that it can’t hide much of anything. One or two of the boys clearly enjoyed the beating, even if they didn’t let it show on their faces.

Once the birching was over and done with the next step of the training began. Coach put them through calisthenics – beginning with crunches, because he was just that much of a dick. There was strength training, there was flexibility training. None of it was anything he hadn’t done before. By the time the bell sounded for lunch he found he was definitely ready for food, although he wasn’t starving and he was more than a little turned off by the flogging.

He made sure he sat near the birching victim at lunch. Miguel and Scott joined him. “You okay, man?” he asked, conversationally.

The guy jumped when he spoke. “Uh, yeah. I’ll live.”

Sam noticed that he was just poking at his lunch, which seemed to be some kind of soup and bread. At least the soup had greens in it. “I’m Sam. These are Miguel and Scott.”

He was silent for a moment. “Andy,” he admitted grudgingly. Sam’s brain, acting on autopilot, filled in the rest. Andy Nguyen, sixteen, tennis. “I guess it’s nice to not be the new guy anymore.”

“So you’ve been here…”

“A week,” he whispered. “Feels like ten years.”

“Was that the first time they….”

“No.” He folded his mouth shut and Sam decided not to continue that line of inquiry.

“So what’s usually next on the schedule?” he asked the group at large. “I want to know what I’m getting into.” He flashed a grin. “I hate walking into a situation blind, you know?”

That got little chuckles out of the others at least. “Afternoons are combat training,” Scott told him. “Start out with a little bit of a run to get us warmed up again – half an hour to forty-five minutes, nothing major.”

“Then hand-to-hand,” Miguel added. “We’re not supposed to be killing one another, but that’s about the only rule. We do that for a couple of hours.”

“Then weapons,” Andy told him. “They’ve got these rattan things, they’re supposed to be weighted like real swords and crap but they don’t have edges so they probably won’t kill us.”

Sam snorted. “Probably,” he repeated. John Winchester hadn’t bothered with fake weapons. He’d just expected them to just not kill each other. “All right. After that?”

“After that is dinner. Then prayers,” Miguel added. “Not that we really do much for that. We sit and stare. Then it’s back to bed.”

Okay. He could work with that, he supposed.

Training proved to be everything they promised. Hand to hand was nothing Sam couldn’t handle. He tried not to look “too” good, but he’d been training in this stuff since he could walk, long before he’d known about werewolves and ghosts and whatever-the-fuck-else went bump in the night, and his body just would not allow him to pretend to be incompetent. Every member of the group had to fight everyone else, not to the death but to submission, and Sam wasn’t about to let anyone else make him submit. Especially not the couple of guys who’d gotten boners watching Andy get beaten, not with the way they were looking at him. He got that some people had kinks, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with the way they looked at him when they thought he was vulnerable.

After hand to hand was rattan. Rattan was a little harder to adjust to. Sam was used to fighting with a knife, usually a butterfly knife or a switchblade, sometimes a hunting knife. He was also a damn fine shot. It seemed like they wanted him to get used to fighting with much larger weapons like small spears and short swords and even a trident and net, and those weren’t as easy for him to wrap his head around. The stakes were higher, too – no protective equipment was provided, and of all things he needed more than anything to keep his head clear. He couldn’t afford to let anything hit him in the head. Coach seemed content to make everyone fight him with the same weapon he was using on his first day, which made things easier. Not easy, but easier.

He could hear his father’s voice in his ear as he fought. “You really think a wendigo is going to be easy on you because you’re new? Come on. You’re going to get ripped apart. And you’ll deserve it. What the hell have I been training you for if you can’t even take out a freaking high school linebacker with a stick? No wonder I abandoned you to a homicidal cult! Dean and I are better off without you.”

He tried not to listen to it, that voice in his head, and focus on figuring out the mechanics. He did manage to keep from getting hit in the head, which he supposed was about as good as he could hope for. As for the other stuff – the unfamiliar weapons, the strangers who were more adept with the weapons than he was – he ultimately went with what he knew. He might not know how to use a trident and net but he knew that both of those things gave an enemy a longer reach. If he eliminated that advantage – stepped right in and took out the arm with the net, and maybe knocked the guy to the ground at the same time, maybe he’d be able to work around that.

Dinner consisted of chicken sandwiches, piled high with as many fresh vegetables as chicken. “I’ll say this for this place,” Sam commented, regarding one of the two sandwiches they’d put on his plate. “The food is better so far.”

“Seriously?” Miguel doubted. “I think one of the worst parts of what’s happening is that I’m never going to eat my mother’s cooking again. I just want to try her black bean soup one more time, or tamales. Skinny Sam – you wouldn’t be skinny anymore if I could bring you home for just one weekend, I’m telling you.”

“No no no.” Scott waved a hand. “He hasn’t lived until he’s had my grandmother’s potato salad. It’s just like they used to make in the old country, with bacon and everything. Just a taste and you’ll think you’re back in Stuttgart.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure that Sam here doesn’t want tamales or potato salad.” Andy offered a sad smile. “He wants pho. My mom made – makes – the best pho in the US, everyone says so. Even my grandmother likes my mom’s pho, and she doesn’t even like my mom.”

Miguel nudged Sam with his shoulder, gently to avoid a bruise. One of the more aggressive boys had left it with one of the rattan short swords. Sam had left a retaliatory mark on the guy’s neck with a flying move that had gotten the rest of the boys to stop their bouts and watch – not what he’d been going for but there was nothing he could do about it now. “Come on, Skinny Sam. There has to be something your mom cooks that you like, man.”

“Uh, my mom died when I was a baby,” he told them. “So I don’t really know. Formula, maybe,” he joked when he saw their faces fall. “But, um, my brother once mentioned that she made pie. So I guess maybe pie?”

“So what, your dad never remarried or anything?” Andy bit into his sandwich.

“Nah. He just drags us around the country.” He was going to get these guys back to their mothers, to their tamales and potato salads and pho. There were no two ways about it. The days did not change. Every day was exactly the same, although minor details might vary slightly. The specific food served at a meal might change, with sausage instead of eggs and cream of wheat instead of oatmeal, but the meals were always perfectly nutritionally balanced and perfectly healthy. The workout routines did not vary, although the exercises might. Prayer consisted of the boys being brought before Charon’s altar. Charon did not appear before them again.

Sam tried to avoid attention from the adults. This seemed like the most sensible option as he tried to understand the lay of the land here. While the guards were not afraid of demonstrating their sadistic sides if a prisoner stepped out of line, they didn’t seem to be trying to egg the kids on or urging them to give excuses to act out; they just seemed to try to avoid interacting with the kids as people at all. They didn’t even use names with the kids.

Rules were fairly simple. You obeyed orders. You did your training. Speaking was permitted in the mess hall, although the guards would come closer if they thought anyone seemed to be speaking intensely or if a knot of prisoners became too large.

Just as the Winchesters had noticed when the case came up, the kids were all between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. That meant that while they were all certainly traumatized by their circumstances they were also teenagers, and teenagers tend to separate by mutual interest and personality. There were distinct cliques. Sam had his friends, Miguel and Andy and Scott. They had a couple of other hangers-on, like Andy’s roommate, Dan, and Joel, whose cell was up near the end of the hall. They had all been there the shortest time. Others, who had been there longer, were colder. They didn’t socialize much, but watched warily. They watched the punishments as opposed to simply staring ahead of themselves, their voices when they spoke were free of emotion. That didn’t surprise Sam. They’d been here for a long time. They’d been traumatized, they’d been separated from their families, they’d probably started to sink into despair already.

Then there were the two or three at the opposite end of the spectrum. They were the ultra-aggressive fighters. Miguel told him that one of them hadn’t even been there all that long, only about five weeks. Two of them had been the ones to get visibly excited at Andy’s beating. They didn’t sit together, they didn’t seek one another out. They didn’t speak at all anymore. They just stared and seethed, like they were trying to contain something.

Sam had been there four days when he found out what happened when that containment failed. He was sitting with the rest of the kids he’d already started to think of as “Awake” at a corner of the mess hall, telling the story about the time Dean had gotten caught by Jenna O’Brien’s dad in her room with no pants on. Sam hadn’t been there but he’d heard the story often enough from his brother, when Dean had been trying to distract him from pain or fear or his anger about his dad, that he knew every detail and embellishment by heart. He figured it was good enough to keep people’s spirits up right now. That was what it was for, for crying out loud.

And that was when one of the Lost Ones, as he thought of them, stood up. He didn’t have a name, or if he did no one had used it since Sam’s arrival. He was a redhead, and so covered in freckles that Sam had thought of him as Spot since first sight. It wasn’t like he had any other name to use.

Spot rose, but he never rose beyond a crouch. He didn’t speak, he didn’t yell. He just growled and charged at the corner occupied by the Awake kids, using his fork to stab out at Andy. The tennis player – tallest of the clique, but slimmest and least skilled as a fighter – cried out and brought up his own fork in a feeble attempt to defend himself. The guards, Sam noticed, looked militantly indifferent.

Sam met Miguel’s eyes and they rose as one, charging in to defend their friend. Sam punched Spot in the eye while Miguel grabbed the arm that held the fork, twisting it behind his back and taking the weapon away. Spot didn’t seem fazed by this thwarting of his design, although he shook his arm free of Miguel and shoved at Sam before taking a swing at Andy’s midsection.

Andy took the opportunity to stab at Spot’s face with his own fork. He managed to get the instrument into the neck, punching his attacker in the nose as Sam took the aggressor’s arm and hyperextended it behind his back, dislocating the shoulder. Spot didn’t cry out, but continued to struggle toward Andy. This was when the guards decided to intervene, Tasers out. The other Awake kids stood between Andy and Spot while Sam maintained his iron grip until two guards took over for him.

One of them made eye contact with him. “You’d have made a good CO, kid,” he offered before they dragged the injured boy away.

He couldn’t tell if he should be insulted or flattered and decided that “neither” was the best option. “What the hell?” he asked the others, eyes trailing over the area where the altercation had taken place. “You okay, Andy?”

“I’m fine,” his friend told him. “Lost my fork though.”

“I wouldn’t want to eat with it anymore. What happened there?”

“What happens to everyone eventually,” Scott sighed. “They all turn eventually. It’s like the guards wait for it. Eventually every single one of us turns into… that. Some of us take longer than others, but some only take a month.” He looked away. “Then they take you away. They put you in the arena.”

“You don’t mind fighting in there,” Joel concurred sadly, big hands massaging his own temples. “I’ve… I’ve seen it, Skinny Sam. I’ve seen those boys. They don’t care. They’re not afraid. They’re not afraid to die, they’re not afraid to kill. They just don’t care about a thing, you know?”

“But they can’t just send Spot into the ring like that,” Sam objected. “He’s got a dislocated shoulder and tableware sticking out of his goddamn neck.”

“They’ll patch him up. I’m not sure how many people they’ve got in the cages, but you saw. He can’t be around people anymore.” Scott shook his head. “Sorry.”

He sighed. “Okay. Okay. We’ll just have to….“

“To do what, Sam?” Andy gave a bitter little laugh. “Just wait until the end. It’s all we can do, man.”

“No. It’s not. There are people – good people, smart people – out there looking for us right now.” He couldn’t see any other guards coming in, but he kept his voice low anyway.

“So what?” Miguel shook his head. “Sam, dude, they’ve been running this thing for decades, man. You think that people weren’t looking for those other kids too?”

“Not like this.” He hoped he wasn’t lying. He probably wasn’t lying. It was a real case; John and Dean had definitely been doing real research. Unless it had all been an elaborate ruse? Sam hadn’t been sure that it had been a real supernatural case until he’d seen the altar. Maybe it had been a giant ruse. “And they didn’t have what we have.”

“What’s that, genius?” Dan sneered.

“Us.”

Scott scoffed and Miguel hung his shaking head, but they were both grinning so Sam counted them as being on board.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence between children as well as child death.

Now that Sam had promised that they would be getting out of this mess before any of the Awake kids turned into feral creatures like Spot, he had to come up with a plan. The biggest problem, of course, was the lockdown. Sam could fight, but he still had no idea what he was fighting against. He needed more information. In order to get that information he needed to get out of his cell.

He’d had a set of lockpicks on him when he’d been taken. He didn’t have them anymore. The lock on the door to his cell was fairly simple, but that didn’t help him open it when his equipment consisted of a loincloth. Making a lockpick would be a major challenge. Sam was good at sleight of hand. Dad and Dean hated to give him credit for that but he’d been very good at those tricks, better than they’d ever realized. Good enough to make a spare key for the Impala without Dean ever realizing he’d taken the key, anyway. Of course his usual tricks depended on things like sleeves, and boots, and pants. None of which he had right now. He had two flaps of flimsy fabric.

The difficulty of concealing his acquisitions didn’t stop him from keeping his eyes peeled for any bits of metal that he could squirrel away. He didn’t work alone. He wasn’t sure that he could trust Scott, not completely. He’d noticed that the older boy seemed prone to long bouts of silence – not that depression was exactly unexpected under the circumstances, but it was also one of the symptoms of “going Quiet,” that in-between stage that marked the beginning of the transition to feral. Dan and Joel didn’t seem entirely on board with the plan, but Andy and Miguel were still relatively new and definitely on board with evacuating.

They developed a strategy. They would try to steer each other toward the sides of the rooms when they sparred, and then if one of them spotted something useful they would knock the other one down in the vicinity of the item. Concealing the objects was harder to do – holding a shard of metal in your mouth for the length of a full afternoon sparring session is not considered a life-extending option – but they would find ways. There weren’t many seams in the loincloth, but Sam soon found that the hems made a viable alternative.

Not everyone could be trusted with the details of Sam’s lockpicking plans, but everyone was absolutely on board with working together to learn to fight better. Even the guards didn’t object to Sam showing his buddies some moves. It was different from how they had been training, it was an innovation, but at the end of the day it was still training and it would make the show better. Even one or two of the Quiet ones, guys who didn’t tell their names but looked a little more alive when Sam started talking to them and showing them what to do, joined in. The moves they were working on looked fairly minor from the guards’ perspective, and of course it didn’t matter to the guards if they were learning to defend themselves against an armed opponent while they themselves were unarmed. They were in the arena; it was completely feasible for them to become disarmed. These things happened.

On the Saturday after Sam had been brought there they experienced their first break from routine. After dinner they’d been ordered to shower, which was done in communal showers not unlike some exceptionally horrible gym classes he’d taken. Once they were clean they were issued new loincloths and marched through the same tunnels that they’d been marched through initially and into the arena.

The boys were led to a long bench right near the altar, with guards at either end and guards behind them. Only a wall in front of them separated them from the ring. Charon’s altar had been cleaned for the occasion. The rest of the seats were filled; there were significantly more than fifty people here this time. The audience looked overwhelmingly white. It was hard to tell much about their backgrounds beyond that; they dressed like they would have dressed to go to church. There were men here, women. Children. Audience members streamed in, smiling and laughing and happy. He shuddered.

At some point the lights dimmed. Sam remembered the spotlight. Now it shined on one person: a man, dressed in a white tunic with a red mantle, standing before the altar. He looked like he might have been in his late forties, blond with a few streaks of gray. “Brothers and sisters, I welcome you to this week’s Games. Tonight we have two contests for you; I assume that you have placed your wagers ahead of time.” A little titter went around the room. Sam exchanged glances with Miguel and Scott, who shrugged. This was what went on, then. “Excellent. Before we get to the main event, however, we need to give thanks to our Lord and invite him to join us.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and began to read Latin.

Sam frowned. He still couldn’t quite get used to the type of Latin being used here. So many people thought that Latin was static just because it was a dead language now, in the modern world. They forgot that Latin had been a very much alive language for a couple thousand years before it devolved into the Romance language spoken today, that it had undergone profound changes. Just as a modern American would find the earliest roots of English to be incomprehensible, the Latin Sam spoke bore about as much resemblance to the Latin coming out of this man’s mouth as it did to modern French, maybe less. But it didn’t take someone with a doctorate in classical studies to figure out that Charon was being called upon. Even if Sam couldn’t pick the words out of the stream of Latin pouring out of the guy’s mouth, he could see the cold, dark mass forming at the altar.

Once the creature had made its presence felt it was time for the games to begin. A spotlight shone on one end of the arena and a boy walked in. He might have been Sam’s age, but he was probably on the younger end of the spectrum and his eyes were absolutely dead. His dark skin bore several scars that weren’t a year old and he carried a short sword. This one was not made of rattan. The crowd clapped politely for him. Sam thought that was normal until the second boy strode in.

This one carried a trident and net. He had to be at least seventeen and had a good foot on his opponent, although his eyes were no less dead. The crowd went wild for him and Sam understood. The older boy had been in the ring for a long time after he’d gone feral, he was a favorite. The younger one had only turned recently. This might even be his first time in the ring.

“Salute your Lord!” the priest demanded.

The boys raised their weapons in the direction of Charon. It didn’t feel particularly reverent. Sam got a sense of… something….coming from the alien creature by the altar. He didn’t think the god felt particularly pleased by the gesture either.

“May the best man win.”

The older boy sneered and twirled his net slowly, lazily. His leaden eyes raked up and down the smaller boy like they might a girl at a school dance, and for a moment Sam was struck by a powerful memory of Dean. What was he doing right now, while Sam watched two boys fight to the death? Was he looking for Sam? Was he watching a game? Hitting on a girl?

Trident Boy lashed out with his net, trying to snare the legs of Sword Boy. Sword Boy made a contemptuous noise, slashing upward against his enemy’s off arm as he danced out of the way. The cut was deep. It wasn’t fatal, but it was deep. Blood surged forth from the injury, dripping onto the ground as Trident boy dropped the net.

Loud groans erupted from some in the crowd. Others cheered. Sam couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride for that. Sword Boy had been fed to the larger boy like chum to a shark. He still had a significant disadvantage, but at least he’d gotten to defend himself a bit.

Trident Boy snarled and stabbed out with his weapon, hitting Sword Boy in the meaty part of his calf. Sword Boy sank to his knees, crying out in a high-pitched yell that made the crowd go wild with bloodlust. Sam’s fists clenched. He wanted to stab them all. These people were disgusting. Trident Boy closed in, looking to… do what? Put on a show? That was arrogant, and he would pay for it dearly.

Sword Boy lashed out, cutting Trident Boy’s hamstrings with his sword. Trident Boy’s cry was no less anguished than Sword Boy’s had been, but it was deeper in timbre and more genuine in flavor. Sword Boy grabbed the trident to haul himself to his feet. He stnached Trident Boy’s longish hair and tugged his head back, exposing his neck as he raised his sword with his other hand.

The sound that Trident Boy’s head made as it was separated from his body was not describable, and Sam had seen a lot of violence in his short life.

The entire arena was still for a moment. Even the headless corpse stayed erect on its knees in the terrible pause that followed. Then a sickly, grayish glow rose from Charon and expanded until it reached the combatants. Sam felt it as it brushed past him, cold and oddly soft like a pillow. It lingered around the corpse for a moment and then retracted back to Charon.

Two acolytes ran forward to collect the corpse as two guards tased the grinning and hideously erect Sword Boy into submission. The crowd cheered wildly, all except for Sam and the other slaves. Presumably most of the bettors had lost money; even Sam had thought Sword Boy would lose. That didn’t seem to lessen anyone’s joy at an actual beheading.

The next contest was between two older boys. Both of them were scarred; one of them might have been eighteen already. Both of them were armed with spears and this time the fight took longer. Sam studied them to see if there was anything about their technique that he could learn, but for the most part they just stabbed at each other and grunted a lot. The crowd seemed to like it a lot, though, until Boy 1 managed to get Boy 2 in the throat. The gray glow encompassed the combatants again, and then retreated back to the altar.

After the gladiators had been cleared from the scene, Sam and the other slaves were brought forward and made to kneel before Charon. None of the others looked like anything was amiss, so Sam forced himself to calm down and conformed. The priest came and painted on each of them from a bowl of what looked and smelled like blood as he chanted more of the archaic Latin. Sam tried to focus on anything other than the blood, and of course his mind latched onto the Latin. It was his second language after all. It was kind of hard to tell, especially since the Latin used predated the Latin he knew, but it almost seemed to Sam as though the priest didn’t really understand the Latin he was using. He stumbled through the pronunciations, didn’t use any kind of emotional inflection – as though he’d just memorized a bunch of letters on a page instead of learning a language.

It wasn’t an uncommon problem when learning a dead language. Dad’s Latin was a lot like that, and most medieval priests couldn’t be said to have a grasp of Latin at all. They knew the words to the prayers and the necessary verses, but they had no idea what they were actually saying. Obviously the priest knew he was summoning something; there was a giant amorphous blob of cold fluff that should have been a pretty strong indicator. But did he truly know?

**Your perception is strong.**

Sam startled. No one else seemed to have heard Charon.

**Do not raise your head. I am not speaking to them.**

Sam’s heart thundered in his chest. _What the hell is all this, then?_ he challenged, struggling to keep his expression neutral or fearful instead of angry. _Two boys murdered each other! And it was for you! Is this how you get your jollies?_

**I do not get jollies. And whatever name they put on it, this is not “for” me.**

Sam’s flesh crawled with goosebumps, but the sensation left his mind. The priest finished chanting. The boys were herded back to the shower, re-dressed in their loincloths and herded back to their cells. Once inside the lights were turned off and Sam lay in the dark, contemplating what had happened.

He’d been aware that they were being held and trained to participate in some sort of gladiatorial combat, and he knew that their lives were held in contempt. He could accept that (sort of). He could wrap his head around that, intellectually anyway. But he hadn’t fully grasped just how dire the situation was on an instinctive level. In his head a gladiator could survive, could be granted mercy. There had been no opportunity for mercy in that spectacle tonight, no thought of such a thing. Even if the crowd had been so inclined – and they had been in no way, shape, or form so inclined – the combatants would never have been able to restrain themselves in that way.

This was what happened when boys went feral, he recognized. They learned to fight while they still had their minds and souls or whatever – could a person lose their soul and still have their body live? – but no one wanted them to fight for real until they completely lost themselves. They just had to get to the point where all they cared about was killing. Maybe that was the point of prayer time – to push them farther and farther toward going feral.

And what about Charon? The god had spoken to him, but hadn’t wanted him to let anyone else know about it. Why? He didn’t seem particularly impressed by what was being done on his behalf. That made Sam feel marginally better about the situation, but it didn’t help him any. What kind of a crap god just let his followers slaughter people in his name – make people slaughter each other in his name – and didn’t do anything about it? And why talk to Sam about it? Was this like Dean’s “that’s just the way it is” talks?

After about an hour Sam’s light flickered on again. He sat up as he heard the door unlock, but no screws entered the cell. A terrified boy, taller than Sam by a good six inches, staggered inside. He might have been pushed, it was kind of hard to tell. The door closed and locked behind him with an audible click. “Uh,” the boy swallowed. “Hi.”

Sam hadn’t had so much as an idly dirty thought since he arrived, not that he’d been tracking that sort of thing. The shame of being exposed like he was and the bone-shaking terror of his situation had left him soft for a lot longer than he’d experienced since the onset of puberty. The sudden appearance of this tall, muscular young man reminded his body that it belonged to a healthy fifteen-year-old bisexual male, and that healthy young bisexual male bodies liked to spring little reminders on their owners from time to time. He quickly brought his blanket up, making sure that it bunched to hide his groin. “Hi,” he greeted quickly. “I guess my days of having a cell to myself are over. I’m Sam.”

“I’m Josh.” He swallowed again. “I guess I get bottom bunk.”

“Sorry. Early bird and all that.” He winced at the absurdity of the statement, and then winced again at the very idea of feeling awkward about how he sounded. It wasn’t like the guy was going to date him. “So. How much did they tell you?”

“Uh. Not much. I’m a little overwhelmed. I mean, when I left the house this morning I was just a regular basketball player. I didn’t know anything about satanic cults.” He sighed and climbed into his bunk.

“Not so much satanic,” Sam corrected automatically. “Not that it matters. Think gladiators.” He caught his new roommate up quickly.

“Jesus Christ!” Josh half-sobbed. “We’re all going to die!”

“No. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to get us out of here if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It just might be. I mean, they bathed me in blood, Sam!” His voice shook.

Their captors picked that moment to cut the lights. “Yeah. I know. Me too, just last week. But look – my family kind of specializes in this stuff. And –“

“Specializes in weird not-satanic cults?”

“…yeah, something like that.” Sam shifted. “Anyway, they’re looking for us right now.” He hoped. Maybe, if an innocent basketball player had been taken, that would be enough to interest them in the case again.

“So what? The feds are looking for us too, man. My dad’s a sheriff. I’ve seen the case files. Although I don’t think I remember seeing a Sam in the files.”

His heart sank, although he tried not to let it. “My dad doesn’t like cops. He probably wouldn’t have reported me missing. Anyway. We’re getting out of here, Josh.”

He could hear Josh’s sad smile, even if he couldn’t see it. “Yeah. Okay, Sam.”

By morning he’d managed to get his libido under control. Thinking about Charon’s icy presence was invaluable in that regard – better than fifty cold showers, and who knew that random ancient gods would be so helpful? None of the other guys seemed to have this problem. Naturally some of them sometimes got random boners – they were teenaged guys, it just happened and with those stupid loincloths there was nothing anyone could do to hide it. But no one seemed to have a particular attraction to anyone. Sam had counted himself lucky to not have that issue, so naturally fate had intervened to give him a super-hot cellmate.

_“No one wants a buddy watching their backside when he should be watching his back.”_ He remembered his father saying that once. They’d been in yet another of the endless series of motel rooms, eating takeout and watching the news for background news. The president had just enacted a policy on “gays” in the military. Sam, even though he’d been maybe nine or ten, had thought “don’t ask, don’t tell” sounded wishy-washy. John had thought it was “soft on the queers.” “I don’t care what a civilian does with himself,” he’d continued, taking a swig from his bottle, “but it’s different in a war. You can’t be having someone you can’t trust with you.”

At the time, Sam hadn’t thought about it. He didn’t agree with it, but it didn’t have much impact on him, didn’t apply to him. Then he started to notice girls. And boys. And maybe a few people who didn’t seem to fit into either gender but were hot as hell. And he knew he couldn’t say a goddamn word, because his father didn’t want “the queers” near him on “the battlefield,” and sons were always soldiers no matter what, and Dean was Dad’s faithful soldier and would report to their father on anything he thought was relevant.

But that was different. That was maintenance. That was not giving their father one more goddamn reason to not trust him, not that the old man had ever trusted him in the first place, not that he was ever going to trust him, not unless some helpful soul obliterated him entirely and replaced him with Dean’s clone. But this – he was going to need each and every one of these boys to help him, to trust him as much as possible. That meant that none of them could know that he was into guys, even though there was only one of them that did anything for him.

It was Josh, after all, who was going to need to have his back more than anyone else. Josh’s first day went as well as could be expected. Sam introduced him around. The guys all liked him well enough or seemed to anyway; he seemed to like the guys. He found the morning training to be grueling but he got through it okay. Afternoon training was a little more difficult. Josh was apparently not much of a brawler. He did okay with his elbows, but that was about it. He had a fine grasp of body mechanics, though, and once Sam showed him a few moves he was able to pick up on things pretty quickly.

That night Sam finally decided it was time to try to explore. He thought he had enough metal squirreled away that he could pick some locks. First, though, he had to explain his plan to Josh. His cellmate was unenthusiastic to say the least. “You’re going to get killed,” he said. “I mean, how do you even know how to pick locks?”

“Petty crime is kind of my father’s fallback plan for us,” he quipped, already starting on the cell door. “Trust me. This lock isn’t an issue, and the other locks aren’t electronic either. Beyond that, well, I guess I won’t know until I get there but I mean you know there’s no getting away until we have more information.”

“Sam, if they catch you they will kill you. No hesitation. We’re not even people to them. We don’t even have names to them.” Josh reached out and wrapped a hand around his wrist.

Sam furiously thought about the arena, about Charon’s altar, about Charon. Anything other than blood moving to parts of his body that didn’t need increased blood flow thank you very much. “Josh,” he said, putting a hand over the older boy’s, “it’s okay. I’d rather die trying to get out than die after going feral. You know?”

“I thought you said someone was looking for you,” he challenged.

“I said someone was looking for you,” Sam shot back. “And I’m not a big believer in sitting around and waiting for rescue.” He freed himself gently and went back to work on the lock.

Just as he’d expected, the lock released after only a few seconds of work. He freed himself and slipped out into the corridor. He thought about which route to take. On the one hand, he could go up toward the arena, to Charon’s altar. He could try to see if he could figure out an escape route that way. On the other hand, that wouldn’t give him much information. He decided to go the other way – toward the mess hall, the training arena, the spaces where he suspected the guards lived.

He padded through the darkened corridors. The convenient thing about living entirely underground was that someone had to provide light at all times, so he didn’t need to grope his way along. He knew how to get to the mess hall, which was silent. Moving slowly and carefully kept it that way. He’d never noticed any kind of cameras but it wouldn’t do to get complacent; he stuck to the shadows as best he could and tried to keep covered.

He’d seen guards enter and leave through a stairwell that gaped in the middle of the mess hall, so he decided to press himself against the wall and explore that option. The stairs only led up one floor before emptying out into another corridor. Here there were doors – not metal, but wooden. If he could estimate by the doors there were as many guards as there were prisoners, with twice as many rooms. That assumed that the rooms were all occupied of course.

How the hell were they funding all of this? Sam shook his head as he crept along the corridor to the next set of stairs. Did the guards have other jobs and only work here in their off time? Were they living off some kind of fund, like in those Heinlein novels only somehow more gross? These people had been doing this for decades – half a century at least. How had they gotten away with it and had no one in the community notice?

He crept up another level. This level had windows. He could, if he were so inclined, make a break for it right now. Of course, there was snow on the ground. It was still November, still fairly early in November if Sam remembered correctly, and there was snow on the ground. That implied a decent elevation or some significant weather event in the past week; he’d have to ask Josh when he got back to the cell. There weren’t a lot of outdoor lights but he could see a lot of open space, joined by a few long, low buildings like barns. This had to be some kind of county fair site, probably abandoned. This room didn’t have a lot of features, but what it did have was a large cabinet. Picking the lock revealed that the cabinet contained Tasers, lots of them. At least two per guard.

He closed and locked the cabinet behind himself. He couldn’t afford to let the screws know that he’d been in here. Then he hurried back to Josh and reported on his findings. “So if we’re at a county fairgrounds, we can’t be all that far from some kind of population center,” he declared. “I mean, not necessarily walking distance. Especially not without wacky things like clothes or shoes. But we just can’t be all that far away, you know?”

“So what does that mean?” The cell was dark, so Sam couldn’t see him, but he could hear him. He could imagine him, stretched out on his back, hands behind his head, fingers knotted in his dark curls. “It doesn’t help us if we can’t get there, Sam.”

“I know. But we’ll get there, right? They have to have some kind of vehicle for disposing of the bodies. Hell, they nabbed me in a van of some kind. And it has to be something that can handle these mountain roads. Hey, where did they grab you anyway?” He hung his head over the side of the bunk, even though he couldn’t see anything.

“Smithfield.”

“Did it… uh, did it snow or anything recently? Because there’s snow on the ground outside.”

“We’re in the mountains, Sam. Or at least we were, and I can’t think we’re all that far away.” He sighed. “God I just want to see my parents again, you know? My sisters, my brother.”

“We’ll get you there, Josh.” He reached down without thinking and grabbed his cellmate’s arm. After a second, Josh took his hand and squeezed it.

“Maybe. I know you’ll try.”

“We’re going to do this. All of us. I can’t do it alone. But we can do it all together.”

The next day wasn’t significantly different from the first. A couple of other Quiet kids joined their training. Another moved closer to feral, and Sam wondered what was wrong with him that he’d adopted a sliding scale to measure the humanity of teenagers. About an hour after dark Sam explored again. This time he found a records room, one that left him shaking his head. What was it about evil that left an incalculable desire to meticulously archive every nasty, evil deed that they’d ever done? He didn’t waste time poring over the records. He wasn’t here for that; he didn’t have time for that. He just had time to make a note of where things were and move on; he needed to get some sleep, not that it was easy, and to avoid detection. He also found a space where an actual priesthood or what passed for it seemed to reside – a couple of bedrooms that didn’t seem to be consistently occupied, an office with a few pop-history books about roman religion. No Latin dictionaries, which only cemented Sam’s belief that the people calling themselves priests weren’t really scholars.

He did find a gun safe. It took him a few minutes to crack it, but once he did he found five shotguns. They were probably intended to be used in case of escape; they looked to be in good working order inasmuch as he dared to examine them in low light. Before they made their escape attempt he would have to do something about that.

He sneaked back down to his cell. Josh wasn’t even pretending to be asleep. “I was worried,” the older boy objected. “I thought they’d gotten to you.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he assured his cellmate. “I appreciate your concern, though.”

“Sam, I don’t think you understand. You’re the only hope any of us has of getting out of here.” He put his hands on Sam’s biceps.

“Josh, I’m not. I’m sure you can figure out how to pick a lock. And if not you can overpower the guards in the lunchroom easy enough – there’s enough of the Awake kids now, even without me.” He found himself glad that he couldn’t look into Josh’s eyes. He’d probably kiss him; Sam found that he really liked kissing and had ever since Amy Pond had touched her lips to his.

“No. Without you the rest of us wouldn’t have the balls to do it. You don’t get it, do you? How much all of us rely on you, look up to you?”

“I’m the second shortest guy here,” he objected, and he would have continued with that thought if Josh hadn’t kissed him.

Sam responded before his brain caught up to his body, cradling Josh’s face in his hands to keep it close and at a comfortable angle. Josh tasted like the mouthwash they used in here in place of decent dental hygiene and like tonight’s dinner. His lips were smooth and dry, and his cheeks rough from stubble. Sam knew he shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t allow it. Josh didn’t want this. He was just reaching out because he was lonely and scared and traumatized; Sam had no business taking advantage of a guy like this. And yet he couldn’t tear his mouth away.

Josh guided them toward his bunk. Sam didn’t resist. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “We don’t have to… but just stay?”

Sam wrapped his arms around his cellmate. Josh wasn’t the only one who was lonely and scared and traumatized.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains violent imagery and consensual sexual contact between two minors.

Sam reported on what he’d found. He didn’t expect the others to freak out quite so much when he mentioned the shotguns. “They’re just shotguns, guys,” he assured them. “I’ll take care of them before we take any kind of action.”

“If they don’t fucking shoot you first!” Andy seethed. “What the hell is wrong with you? ‘They’re just shotguns.’ Seriously, Sam?”

“I guess that maybe it’s just the way I grew up,” he offered with a grimace. “It doesn’t seem like a big deal. So what if they have a few guns? We take out the guns, they don’t have that advantage. It’s not even a thing.”

“The way you grew up is jacked,” Miguel declared flatly. “You really think that any of us don’t recognize that? You didn’t even have tamales.”

“Potato salad,” Scott insisted, grinning a little.

“Pho,” Andy frowned.

“Screw your tamales and potato salad and pho,” Josh scoffed. “Hanukkah is less than a month away and it’s latke time.”

“My stomach is cramping up even listening to you people,” Sam objected. “I don’t even know what a latke is but it sounds fried. Is it fried?”

“It’s Hanukkah. Everything is fried,” Josh grinned.

“Sounds like my brother’s kind of holiday.” Fortunately all the talk about food distracted people from thoughts of guns. He made sure to focus on disarming tactics during training, though.

His nocturnal explorations brought him around the compound as the week progressed. He couldn’t take too much time to explore; he couldn’t afford to let his performance slip. Sure he’d never been much of a sleeper, between the nightmares and anxiety for his family and the studying. And he’d never, ever thought that he’d be glad his father had demanded he learn to function on minimal sleep but here he was, sneaking out and covering for it almost like a normal teenager. Of course it helped that the guards didn’t care about grades or long-term health, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered.

On Tuesday he found his way to the place where the feral boys were held. He didn’t linger. The smell was terrible, and Sam realized that they must hose the boys down before an arena show. How did the get them into shape for the shows? Did they die in training or were they carefully monitored before they could kill each other?

On Wednesday he made it as far as vehicle storage. There were three or four big crew-cab pickup trucks; they’d probably be able to take a good number of kids out of here on that if it came to it. He’d rather not have to do it like that, though. They had no idea where they were. They had no way of knowing which locals were involved – if they went to the local sheriff’s office, who was to say he wasn’t one of the guards when he wasn’t on duty?

On Thursday they started making a concrete plan. They would make their move on Sunday. It being the day after the big arena show it was the day when people would be feeling the most enthusiastic and complacent. Typically, he had learned from Scott, the kids were very subdued. The guards were least likely to be expecting trouble; that was why they usually inducted new kids on Saturday nights.

Part of Sam felt like they were rushing things. These guys weren’t soldiers. He barely trusted the most Awake of them to get this done – they were great guys, sure, but they weren’t fighters. They’d been training but at the end of the day the most direct fighting experience most of them had involved fighting off one of the feral kids. He’d rather wait. He’d rather wait until he could be a hundred percent sure he wasn’t getting them killed – a hundred percent sure they had the instincts, the knowledge, the skills to go up against a physically larger and numerically superior force.

So, never then.

Every day they waited, though, was a day that they got closer to going feral. Sam and Josh, they had time. Even Scott, who had been edging closer and closer to quiet when Sam had arrived, had experienced a pendulum swing back to the awake side of things. But the quiet ones, they couldn’t afford to wait. Sam had seen the cages for the feral boys. He didn’t know if the quiet ones could be helped, but he was positive that the feral ones were beyond repair. They would remain in their current state, uncaring for anything beyond blood and war, until they died. He wasn’t willing to condemn more boys than he had to. And he sure as hell wasn’t willing to become one of them. So it had to be Sunday, and if they died trying then at least they died quickly instead of slowly waiting to become… that.

Things with Josh – well, if he’d been on the outside he certainly wouldn’t have been sharing a bunk with this guy so quickly. The first night Sam had been convinced that Josh was just reaching out to the nearest person out of desperation, and maybe that was part of it. Sam certainly hadn’t said no, and they hadn’t done more than kiss and cuddle a bit. That was enough. It was enough to hold and to be held and to be a little warmer, to not feel quite so alone.

Josh didn’t say anything when he woke up with morning wood, and he didn’t say anything about Sam’s fairly obvious erection either. Whatever. It was morning, they were teenagers, they were teenaged guys. These things happened and when you spent all of your time locked up with a bunch of other teenaged guys with nothing but a couple of flaps of fabric between you and the world the concept of privacy kind of went out the window. You just dealt with it, you didn’t say anything. You ignored it and expected the same courtesy of everyone else.

That night, though, when Sam got back from his perambulations he found that Josh wanted him back in his bunk. And Sam still didn’t want to say no, so he didn’t. Josh still made the first move, kissing Sam deeply with the kind of passion reserved for the silver screen. He allowed it, welcomed it, chased after Josh’s tongue like a wendigo after a camper. And when Josh’s broad, blistered hands brushed hesitantly over his chest he not only didn’t object but he sighed with pleasure.

“This okay?” Josh whispered.

“More than,” he admitted, and hissed out a little laugh as Josh nipped at his nipple playfully.

They fooled around a little bit, but soon sank into sleep. Training was exhausting, after all.

He couldn’t help but ask the next morning, after the lights went on but before they were let out. “Hey, Josh. I have to know. Do you actually, you know, like guys? I mean, outside of here.”

His heavy eyebrows drew together. “Huh? Yeah. Of course I do. You see a lot of straight guys kissing their cellmates, Sam?” He grinned a little.

Sam felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. “Oh thank God. I was worried….”

“What, that you were just so hot you turned me gay?” The older boy nudged him with his shoulder, giving a little half grin.

“Shut up,” Sam grinned. “No, I just… didn’t want to take advantage of you or anything. You know?” He sighed. “So, like, are you – does your family know?”

“Sure. The basketball team, too. They say as long as I don’t start dating a guy from Logan they’re cool with it.” Sam’s shock must have shown on his face. “What, it’s not like that in Prescott?”

“Aw, I was only in Prescott for like a week, maybe two when I got grabbed. But my dad, he’s not, uh, let’s just say he’s not someone I could ever come out to. You’re lucky you’ve got such a great bunch of guys on the team.”

“Lucky, hell.” Josh snorted. “I’m a damn fine ball player. If they want to win, they have to be okay with it. That’s just the way it is.” He grinned, blindingly. “It helps to be awesome, you know?”

“I suppose it would.” He heard the lock click open, and they left the cell to start the day.

That night they moved on to hand jobs, and this was definitely moving a lot faster than Sam usually moved. He guessed the threat of imminent death probably had a lot to do with it, well that and proximity and hormones and everything. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done this before, but he’d certainly never gone from meeting someone to exploring his most intimate parts in three or four days. But hey – there might not be a tomorrow, or a Monday anyway. And Josh was wonderful, he was everything Sam could have wanted a boyfriend to be if he’d been outside. The experience was just condensed.

They all sat through the next games at the arena. Only the certain knowledge that this was Sam’s last time watching the games let him sit through the whole experience without being sick.

After the requisite slaughtering of two boys – Sam thought it would be three, because the second bout resulted in the victor taking injuries that had to be fatal without major surgery – the boys were made to kneel before Charon again. Sam again felt the god’s presence against his mind. **You have a plan**.

_Maybe_ , he thought back. He didn’t know if he could trust that alien intelligence. He didn’t even know what it was. God, maybe, or maybe just a very powerful spirit.

**I cannot help you while I am thus bound**.

_How can I unbind you?_

**Destroy the altar.**

_And that’s not going to come back to bite me in the ass._

**I can assure you that there will be no biting.**

Sam blinked. Had Charon just made a joke with him? But the presence was gone.

That night both he and Josh listened at the doorway for the sounds of a new “slave” being delivered to one of the cells. There wouldn’t be time to warn him; he’d have to get the warning when the others did. Still, it was what it was. Once the poor kid was safely locked into his own cell and the footsteps had been silent for long enough, Sam slipped out.

He knew exactly where he was going. He made his way to the gun room, where he sabotaged each of the shotguns. He’d thought about leading his comrades here but ultimately decided that having five inexperienced guys armed with shotguns was probably worse than having no one armed with shotguns; it was better to just take them out of the equation altogether. Sure he knew what he was doing with one, but no one else did and if he got taken out it would get bad fast.

Next stop was the Taser room. It took him a minute to remember how to disable a Taser and then several more to sabotage all of them. He unplugged the charging station and used a knife he found in a desk drawer to damage the power cord to the station before plugging it back in, making it appear as though no damage had in fact been done.

Then he went back to his cell and locked himself back in. “We’re ready,” he said. “There’s no backing out. If we don’t act, they’ll know we did something.”

Josh sighed. “All right. I guess this might be our last night on earth then.”

Sam gave a strangled little laugh. “Keep a good thought there big guy.”

“Mmm. No good thoughts. Only bad ones.” He kissed Sam then, deep and hard and full of intent. Sam kissed back, exploring Josh’s body with his hands just as Josh explored his. The thing with the loincloths was that, well, there was no hiding anything. Lying here under the blanket kissing Josh felt good, what with the way that their bodies were pressed up together and all. It would have felt good even if it wasn’t a distraction from the misery of their daily lives and the horror of what they’d just witnessed. He couldn’t hide himself getting hard, and neither could Josh.

An urge struck Sam then. It was probably weird, perverse, but he was an unclean thing anyway so why not get it out there in the open? “Josh?”

“Yeah?”

“I kind of want to… I mean I know it’s kind of freakish but….”

“Spit it out, Sam.”

“I want to suck your dick.”

“What?”

“I want to, uh… I’d like to suck your dick,” he whispered into his bunkmate’s ear. He knew he was a freak. “I’ve never done that. And we could die tomorrow and I want to know what you taste like.”

“Sam.” Josh caught his mouth in a gentle, deep kiss.

“Is that okay?”

He could hear a little laugh. “Christ, we could all die soon and you’re worried about a little blowjob?”

“Want to make sure you’re okay with it.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever going to say no, Sam.”

He moved the flimsy fabric of the garment aside and contemplated the dick before him. There wasn’t a lot of light in here, but he could feel it. The shaft was thick, impressively so. It wasn’t overly long, which was good for Sam right now, but it wasn’t short either and it had a little bit of a curve to the left. He considered his approach, trying to remember what he’d seen in the porn Dean was always watching. Finally he just went for it. Josh was only a year at most older than he was; how much more experience could he possibly have?

Josh groaned as he took the tip into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the crown and working the slit before inching his way down. There, that should work out okay, right?

Josh’s hips started to buck, forcing his dick back into Sam’s throat. No, that wouldn’t work at all. If he was going to die here he was going to do it fighting, not on his knees sucking cock, even if he was finding that he kind of liked sucking cock. He tried to force his throat to relax. He could take it deeper if he could just relax.

Josh gasped. “I- I’m close, Sam.” The younger boy knew Josh was trying to be a gentleman and give him fair warning, but Sam didn’t want to stop. He wanted to keep going, wanted to keep on hearing those noises and knowing that he’d caused them. He wanted to know what Josh’s come tasted like, which was probably a weird thing to want but he’d been kidnapped by a weird gladiator cult and was being kept prisoner dressed in a loincloth. Weird was relative at this point.

He stayed where he was and Josh spilled down his throat. Sam swallowed as much as he could. It wasn’t the best flavor in the world, but he’d definitely had worse. He could see why some girls complained, but at least now he knew. He knew, and he also knew that it had been him that had made Josh come - his mouth to be specific, and he loved that.

Josh lay back for a moment as Sam cleaned him up with the cheap toilet paper provided by their captors. “That was your first blowjob?” he gasped when he came back to himself.

“My very first,” he confirmed.

“You have got some kind of God-given talent, Sam.” He took Sam in hand then, stroking him until the aching in his length exploded messily over both of their chests. After he cleaned them up he came back to bed and they held each other close until morning.

It happened at breakfast. Sam didn’t want to give the bad guys time to figure out that the Tasers had been tampered with. He didn’t want to give the good guys time to get scared, either. They warned the other Awake kids, the ones who were not in on all of the details of the plan. Dan and Joel were a little pissed about not being in on everything from the beginning but they were entirely on board with getting out, just as Sam had expected.

This was the hardest part. They were going to have to kill people. He was pretty sure that he could do it. The rest of them? Well, they would just have to find out. The boys ate their breakfast and surveyed the newest recruit. He told them his name was Pete. He was very open to getting out. That was all Sam needed to know. He told the new kid to stay out of the way.

When they’d finished their breakfast Andy and Miguel started to argue. What they argued about Sam didn’t know, didn’t care. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it got the two guards to come over in an attempt to separate them. When the first guard bent down to grab Andy’s arm Sam lashed out with a punch to the man’s trachea that left him mouthing silently for air. It might have killed him eventually, but Sam didn’t wait. He grabbed his prey’s chin and the back of his head and gave a vicious twist that rang out through the silent cafeteria; the guard stopped moving instantly.

Meanwhile, Andy and Miguel had stopped their play-fight and grabbed the second guard, holding him down. Josh’s large hands were wrapped around the man’s throat, thumbs pressed against his windpipe. The adult fought but Scott and Dan got in on the act, holding his legs down. It didn’t take a lot of time before his bulging eyes went glassy and his pupils fixed.

He supposed that answered his question as to whether or not the others could kill. The other boys were staring. He swallowed his nerves – this was the tipping point. The Awake kids were perfectly capable of thinking for themselves, but the quiet ones – who knew? They didn’t even have names, or if they did they didn’t use them. Sam jumped up onto the table, and all eyes were on him. “All right,” he said, projecting like he was in Our Town again. “You all know what these guys wanted from you.” He saw a few boys nodding. “Is that what you want for yourselves?” A few boys shook their heads. One or two actually spoke, said “no.” “Then fight with us. Fight back. We can take them. You just saw how.”

“They have Tasers,” said a boy with black hair and prominent cheekbones.

Sam gestured to one of the corpses. Scott picked up the Taser from the man Sam had killed and tossed it to Sam, who clicked it several times to check that he had truly disabled it. “Not anymore,” he pointed out.

“What about Charon?” asked another of the Quiet ones, a redhead.

“He’s on their side!”

“Leave Charon to me.” Sam folded his lips grimly. “I’m not worried about him.”

“Look. The worst that can happen is that we die now, while we still remember who we are and before they can turn us into animals,” Josh declared. “I say we fight.”

“I’d rather fight than wait to be slaughtered,” Joel agreed.

“Me too,” called a brown-haired boy with a scar on his face.

“I’m in,” added a pale boy with bruised ribs.

Slowly, the other Quiet ones found their voices and joined in. Sam let himself grin for a moment. So far, so good. “All right,” he directed. “First things first. We need to get to the arena.”

“Why the arena?” Miguel demanded, looking at him like he had three heads. “I’d figure that’s the last place you’d want to go.”

“That’s where they store the weapons – the real weapons, the one they use for the fights,” he answered quickly. “If we have to fight more of them I want to have something to fight with, you know? Plus, if we’re going to take care of Charon we have to wreck the altar.”

“I’m sixteen different kinds of all for that,” Scott declared fervently. The boys followed Sam down the corridors that only he knew well.

The corridor put them out in the arena itself, which was deserted. This was not entirely unexpected; if there wasn’t any kind of fight going on or other kind of ceremony there was no reason for anyone to be in there. He stopped them before they could rush headlong right into the center of the arena, though; the office had a window onto the open space and he was fairly certain that the office would be occupied. That, he didn’t need. Not yet. They could get into the armory without getting attention yet; it was off to the side and near where the combatants would enter.

The armory gave them everything they wanted, thanks to the keys Sam had taken from his victim. He took a short sword and a dagger for himself. Others took spears, tridents, whatever they felt the most comfortable with. He shook his head. Why did they need enough real weapons to arm each and every boy in their cages? They were never going to have all of them fighting at once, it just wasn’t going to happen. So why keep it on hand? It was just going to come back to bite them in the ass now. He shook his head.

“What’s next, Fearless Leader?” Dan demanded, hefting his trident.

Sam shuddered. He wasn’t a leader. Leaders were clean, shining. Leaders were Dean, good soldiers. He could fake it though, if it got them through this. “We need to keep the person or people in the office from calling for reinforcements,” he directed, meeting several people’s eyes at once. “I’ll go. Miguel, Scott – with me. The rest of you stay here. Josh, you’re in charge. ‘Kay?”

Everyone nodded, and Miguel and Scott followed Sam into the shadows. He was pretty sure he knew the best way to sneak up on the office – it was the long way around but it took the best advantage of the shadows. Miguel and Scott were the best fighters of the Awake kids; was it wrong to take them away from the others and leave them unprotected? The Quiet kids were reasonably competent, but would they stand by their principles in a fight?

They kept themselves low to the ground and below the window before making their move. There were only two people in the office, a man who was probably the priest and Sam’s “owner.” The priest sat at one desk and the woman at the other. Both gaped when the door flew open. Sam charged the priest, gesturing to the others to take the woman. He didn’t even think about it, but stabbed the priest in the throat as hard as he could. He didn’t have a choice, he told himself. He could have called for more guards. He could have called for reinforcements or he could have cast some kind of spell. It wasn’t punitive. It had nothing at all to do with the shame and humiliation of being stripped and forced to run around barely clad. It had nothing to do with being enslaved and terrorized.

It had nothing to do with his near-certainty that his family had abandoned him to his fate.

He turned around to find that the woman who had claimed ownership over him had experienced a separation of her head from her shoulders. It was good to know, he supposed in the part of his brain that wasn’t shaking with fear and adrenaline, that they kept everything sharp and well maintained. John Winchester would be proud.

“Oh my God,” Scott whispered. “We’ve just killed four people.”

“Yeah,” Sam told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We had to do it. Doesn’t mean we had to like it. Can you do me a favor and go get Josh?”

Miguel looked up at him as Scott raced to go fetch the basketball player. Scott’s haste probably had as much to do with getting away from the corpses as it did his desire to follow orders, Sam thought ruefully as Miguel opened his mouth. “What do you need Josh for, man?”

“We’re not that far from a town,” he explained. “You really think local law enforcement isn’t in this up to their eyeballs?”

His friend looked a little green at that.

Josh entered, paling at the bloody bodies on the floor. “What’s up, Sam?”

“I need you to call your father. From the land line,” he continued. “Stay on the line with him, tell him to do a trap and trace. He’ll be able to do that. Tell him not to involve local enforcement, but to bring whatever feds are involved to the best of his knowledge. More of them if that makes him feel good. Tell him that there are locals involved wherever it is that we are. Okay?”

Josh swallowed. Sam watched the door as his boyfriend – or whatever you could call Josh – called his father. You could hear the relief in in the guy’s voice as he spoke to his father for the first time in a little over a week. “Hi, Dad. It’s me – it’s Josh.” God, you could hear the tears. “Yeah. It’s really me. I’m okay. More or less. I mean, I’d like for you to come get me. But I’m going to need you to do a trap and trace on this call – no, there’s a bunch of us. We’re being held captive. Well, we were. We’re going to need clothes. Blankets, shoes. Um, you can’t involve locals wherever it is that we are. There’s a lot of us, and a lot of them and locals are in it. Sam says there’s records. He found them. Yeah, Dad. They’re covering for me. I can stay on the line.”

Sam left the room. He couldn’t stand to listen anymore. He went and grabbed a couple of the Quiet ones. They found a sledgehammer in the medical office and the Quiet ones covered Sam as they approached Charon’s altar. He closed his eyes and reached out. _Charon?_

He didn’t really know how to do this. He wasn’t about to go collect the blood of the priest or the creepy old lady who had pretended to own him so he could use whatever ritual they’d done. That would make him like them, and he wasn’t… he couldn’t be like them. It was bad enough that he’d killed two people himself, that he’d ordered the killing of two more. Not ordered – he wasn’t Dad. Directed, that was a better word. But how was he supposed to reach out to the trapped deity or whatever Charon was? _Charon_ , he thought again, putting more energy and emphasis on the thoughts. _I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you can do anything about it if you can. But we’ve gotten rid of the old man and the old lady. You told me to smash the altar. If there’s anything else you want to tell me, now would be a great time._

He waited. Nothing. Sam grabbed the sledgehammer in his hands, took a deep breath and started to smash.

The altar began to collapse immediately. Sam took ten swings before he turned and saw the eager looks on the faces of the other boys, all of whom had come out of the armory by now. “You all want a swing?” he asked. To a man, they all nodded. “Take turns.” He handed off the sledge to the next boy nearest to him, grabbing a book from the wreckage before his successor could start hitting.

Five guards came running into the room. “What the hell?” asked the first one to enter, gasping at the sight of the dusty boys.

Sam looked up at him through his bangs. “You have two choices,” he told the men. “You can surrender. Or you can die.”

“Kid, we ain’t scared of a bunch of teenagers,” the guard sneered, taking a step forward. “Where do you think you’re going to go, huh? Up here it’s just you and us.”

“It’s taken care of already. It’s just a matter of time. So choose – live. Or die.” His dagger was in his hands now. He kind of liked its weight; he wondered if he’d be allowed to keep it.

The guards rushed at the children, their leader coming right at Sam. He stabbed, but the adult blocked and blocked hard. Sam kept control of the knife, though, using his bare foot to kick out his opponent’s knee. As the taller man fell to the ground Sam drew the blade across his throat and moved on to the next one, an even taller man with iron-gray hair who had grabbed Andy by the hair. He got the man in the side while Andy got him in the armpit with his short sword; they grinned at each other and moved to take on the next enemy.

Three Quiet boys had taken on a younger guard; they’d gotten him down on the ground and were putting their spears to their intended purpose. The other two guards had already been taken out; one was bleeding to death slowly from a gut wound; the other had a broken neck. No one stood near enough to claim responsibility. That was good; Sam didn’t want anyone being prosecuted for this.

Josh and Miguel came to join the others. “My father is on his way with about ten feds,” he said. “They’ve been in Smithfield since I was taken; I guess because my dad’s a cop they figured it was as good a place to base the investigation out of. We’re going home.” His face was wet with tears. “It will take about an hour,” he said, enveloping Sam in a massive hug.

Sam let himself smile as he hugged Josh back. The others cheered – for the most part. Some of the Quietest still looked blank. Sam kind of shared their sentiment as he watched each and every captive take part in dismantling Charon’s altar. Where exactly was he going to go?

When the last stones were separated he saw the black mass form again. This time it took a different shape: an older man, dressed in a very old-fashioned suit. **Thank you, Sam. They had trapped me. Bound me. Now I am released.**

Sam wondered if he had made some kind of horrible, terrible mistake. The creature before him looked human, but none of them made the mistake of thinking that it was human. He could feel the cold coming off of it – him? – in waves unlike anything he’d felt during his captivity. “Charon?” he asked tentatively. The creature inclined his head. **They believed they were worshipping some kind of god. They have learned differently.**

The others stared, open-mouthed, between Sam and Charon. “What… what are you? Is Charon even your name?”

Charon did not shrug. It would not have suited his dignity. **It is as good a name as any. There were other guards in the building. They awaited the return of these five. They no longer wait**.

“Thank you. Sir.” Demons – they’d never encountered a demon, his father didn’t even believe in demons. But if they did exist, and Pastor Jim said that they did, then they were probably warm. Not cold, not like this. So Charon couldn’t be a demon, right?

**You are welcome, Sam. Thank you for your help**. Charon disappeared.

The boys huddled together seeking warmth as they waited for the promised police to arrive. Sam didn’t join them. He couldn’t relax. What if they were ambushed en route? What if they were in on it too? What if Josh’s father was part of the conspiracy? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen a father get rid of his own son. What if Charon had been lying? What if he’d missed someone?

Even when the sirens came screaming up the drive, Sam couldn’t bring himself to believe in rescue. Not until he saw the sheriff himself, crying real tears, throw his arms around Josh and put his own coat around his son’s shoulders could he begin to trust that the man was on the up and up. He stood back and watched as deputies and federal agents approached the boys with blankets and mixed horror and pity, letting them tend to the others. He only felt numb.

Finally Josh approached, accompanied by his father and by a hawk-faced man in a black suit. “Josh tells us that you orchestrated the rebellion,” the fed said by way of preamble.

Sam shifted. “It was all of us, sir. And it had to be done.”

“Absolutely,” he agreed in his quiet, controlled voice. “I don’t mean to imply that it didn’t. I admire what you did. I’m the supervisory special agent in charge of this investigation. We’ll be taking you all to the hospital in Logan for processing, but you’ll be together the entire time. And agents and deputies will be with you all until the evidence and records have been processed and conspirators identified. You’ve done very well, Sam. Your family should be very proud.”

Sam tried to fake a smile. He knew it didn’t work. But getting bundled into the heated squad car with Josh, where they could curl into each other and put this place in their rear view mirror - those were things that he could live with.


	5. Chapter 5

Sam didn’t mind the long ride to Logan. The sheriff turned up the heat for them and they managed their government-issue blankets so they were closer together, sharing body heat as they rode together in silence. They didn’t take the opportunity to do anything more than hold each other; Josh was too relieved about their deliverance and the success of their rebellion to even think about sex, and Sam was too tense for anything that could be done with his boyfriend’s father and an FBI supervisor in the front seat.

Dean would have tried anyway, if Josh were a girl.

Once they made it down to Logan there was a flurry of activity. The ER had been cleared just for them, but it was still a surge of twenty-seven kids at the same time. None of them were really in bad physical shape – a few had Taser burns from the guards, but that wasn’t anything that required serious medical attention. A few others had bruises or bumps. But they all needed to get their vitals checked, they all needed to get blood work done, they all needed to have a statement taken by the police. They all needed to be interviewed by the FBI as well, and then by psychological staff because of “trauma.”

He sat in his little triage bay and waited, staring at the ceiling. It didn’t take long for the supervisor to come back to find him. “Sam, I wanted to talk to you.”

He fought to contain his glare. Of course the guy wanted to talk to him, that was why he was there in Sam’s space. “Yes, sir.”

“Your parents never reported you missing, Sam.”

He folded his lips together. “Yeah. I somehow didn’t think they would.”

“Why is that? Were you a runaway, Sam?”

“No.” The memory of Flagstaff filled his mind, unbidden. “Not this time, anyway. They knew I was taken. My father, he doesn’t like the police. Doesn’t trust them. He wouldn’t interact with law enforcement if his life depended on it, sir.”

“But it wasn’t his life that depended on it. It was yours.”

Sam felt one corner of his mouth curl and forced it back into neutrality. “Sir.”

“The issue remains, Sam, that we need to notify someone that you’ve been found. We can’t just let you run loose. It would be illegal and irresponsible.” He sighed. “What about grandparents?”

“Dead, sir. There’s a friend of the family, a priest in Minnesota. Father Jim Murphy in Blue Earth. If you call him he should be able to get in touch with my father or come pick me up himself. I’m pretty sure my father had documents drawn up in case anything ever happened to him.” He looked away.

“Sam…” His voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is, sir.” He took the proffered pen and paper. “This is his phone number. I think you should be able to catch him in between Masses.”

“Thank you.” He paused. “Josh tells us that you were the one who did all of the reconnaissance – slipping out of your cell at night to gather information about the people holding you, coming up with the plan, training the other children.”

Sam shifted uncomfortably. “Sir, I only did what anyone else would do –”

“No, Sam. You didn’t. One of my agents is back at that facility. He’s looking at the records right now and for fifty years no one has tried to put together a rebellion. Individuals have tried to escape. No one has tried to free the others. I suppose that no one had the expertise you do.”

“I don’t have any expertise, sir. I’m actually pretty bad at it. I mean, it took me two weeks –“

“Sam. You did fine.”

“People died.”

“They were very willing for you to die.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. The whole point is that people aren’t supposed to die, you know? But there wasn’t any other way out.”

The adult took his hand and met his eyes, full of intensity and sincerity. “No. There wasn’t. And sometimes it’s inevitable. It’s not to be sought, but that’s not what you did.”

“But I didn’t feel bad about it, at the time,” he admitted. Why was he saying these things to a cop – a fed, no less? They were going to lock him up and throw away the key.

“I know. At the time you needed to be severe. If you hadn’t, you would have just waited to die like the others. And now you can feel free to grieve, to mourn. It’s okay.” He squeezed Sam’s hand. “I need to go, Sam. But I need for you to know that every single one of these boys – the ones who can speak, anyway – are telling me the same thing. You saved them, and you freed them. I need for you to know that.”

Sam stared at the ceiling for a little while longer. A nurse came and asked him if he wanted anything for lunch, but he didn’t. His family hadn’t even bothered to report him missing and he hadn’t really expected them to, but it still stung. He had nowhere to go.

After another few hours Josh came to see him. He wore his own clothes now, jeans and a white sweater. They looked good on him, very good. “Hey,” he greeted. “I’ve been discharged. Perks of being the sheriff’s kid, I guess.”

Sam forced a grin. “I guess.”

“Look. Um, that FBI guy called that priest in Minnesota. I guess, uh, I guess your father never even told him you were missing.”

Sam snorted. “Sounds about right. What did he say?”

“He said he’d do what he could to track your dad down or else he’d come in a couple of days. I guess your dad can be a hard one to get hold of.”

“Something like that.” Sam rested his head on the back of the gurney.

“Listen. There’s really no reason that you should have to stay in the hospital. I mean, you’re not sick. You’re not hurt. And, um, we’ve got the space. So, I mean, I talked to my dad and he says that it’s okay for you to come and stay with us until your people show up, you know?”

Sam’s heart couldn’t decide whether to leap into his throat or jump for joy. “I don’t want to impose on you,” he objected. “I mean it’s close to Thanksgiving and everything…..”

“Yeah, well, I mean there won’t be bacon on the table but we do eat Thanksgiving too, you know.” He grinned. “And I’ll get to teach you all about latkes, because man is your education lacking. Seriously, though. It’s no imposition, we’ve got the space and I don’t want to lose you yet.”

He sighed. “I don’t want to lose you either,” he admitted, taking Josh’s hand. “I just… I mean they’re just getting you back, you know? I don’t want to interfere with that.”

“It won’t be like that, Sam. I promise.” Josh’s face broke out in a wreath of smiles and he kissed Sam deeply before going to talk to his father.

And that was how it was settled that Sam would be staying with the Finkelman family. The FBI provided sweats for him from the field office in Salt Lake City, because apparently they had a gym there or something, and he was sent on his merry barefoot way. The family lived in a reasonably sized house on River Birch Drive, and they had a guest room for Sam since their oldest two daughters had moved out and gone to college some time before. They had some clothes that Josh had outgrown not long ago that they were willing to let him have; that was the great thing about growth spurts. There were even shoes.

He got a call from Pastor Jim that very night. “Sam,” his mentor told him, voice shaking. “I had no idea that you were even apart from your family. To find out that you were taken by a cult – held for two weeks! Sam, I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay, sir. I survived.” He let himself smile a little bit at the indignation in the priest’s tone.

“How did your father even let this happen?” Jim continued. “How did Dean?”

Sam scoffed. “They used me as bait, sir. They wanted this. They got it.”

“Sam….” And the thing was, even Pastor Jim, who saw the good in everyone, couldn’t pretend that they hadn’t. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too. But like I said, I survived.”

“You more than survived. Your FBI friend made it sound like you made quite the impression on a number of them.”

“God I hope not. That’s all I need – Dad’ll lose his mind.” He shuddered. “Do you know where he is?”

“No, Sam. But I’m sure I’ll hear from him by tomorrow. If I haven’t heard from him by Tuesday then I’ll come and get you myself, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Life at the Finkelmans’ was pretty amazing. The house was warm, and Sam had his own room. That didn’t stop him and Josh from sneaking off to steal kisses from one another, of course, or fool around in other ways, but Sam had his own room and he had a bed with a real, nice mattress and nice sheets on it. It wasn’t fancy, but the sheets were nice and clean and not worn through.

The Finkelmans weren’t particularly religious, although they did try to keep vaguely kosher. This meant a mostly vegetarian diet, since there weren’t a lot of kosher butchers in Smithfield, but Sam found that he could live with that very easily. He quickly learned about keeping the utensils and serving bowls and plates separate and was able to pitch in and wash dishes and help out with food prep. Josh teased him and complained that he was making him look bad, but he was only joking. He knew that Sam was wallowing in family life.

By Tuesday, he had to admit that he didn’t mind that he hadn’t heard from Pastor Jim or his father. He was sure he was becoming an imposition on the Finkelmans, but he was also just selfish enough not to mind. The whole scene was alien to him, and he studied it with the fervor of the most devoted anthropologist. These people adored their children, all of them, and they truly enjoyed having Josh back among them. They teased each other in a good-natured way. They spent time together. They helped each other with tasks.

And they included Sam with everything. They made sure that he never felt like an outsider. Even the family dog took to him right away, bringing him toys to play with. Sometimes he wondered if he’d died and gone to Heaven after all, except of course he wasn’t going to Heaven. When he thought about everything that had happened – he’d killed people, humans, and he hadn’t even hesitated – he knew that he didn’t deserve to be where he was living like a king. But here he was.

Thanksgiving came. He sat beside Josh, awkward in the face of grandparents and cousins and sisters. He was the outsider, the freak, the stray that their fine tall son had brought home from his captivity. But no one talked to him like he was a waif or a stray or a freak. They treated him like anyone else, and if anyone noticed his foot twined around Josh’s no one said anything about that either.

By the time the next week started up the Finkelmans had begun to consider enrolling him in school. He didn’t mind. If he was going to be here, he should go to school. And much as he missed Dean, he liked being here. This was normal, and he felt safe. He felt warm. It was nice.

Of course, it was after dinner the Wednesday after Thanksgiving that it all had to end. He recognized the impatient knock on the door even before the banging stopped, and he rose to his feet. “What is it, Sam?” Mrs. Finkelman demanded, even as her husband also rose and reached for his gun. “You’re white as a sheet!”

“It’s my dad,” he swallowed.

The adults exchanged glances. Josh stood to take Sam’s hand. “It’s okay, Sam. He had to come eventually.”

“He really didn’t,” Sam whispered.

But Sheriff Finkelman was opening the door, and there stood John and Dean Winchester. John was inscrutable as ever, eyes hard as he looked Sam over. Dean looked like a wreck. “You must be the sheriff who was kind enough to look after Sam,” John greeted. “I’m John Winchester.”

Sheriff Finkelman wasn’t impressed. “Mmm. Sheriff Mike Finkelman. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Come on, Sam. Let’s go. You’ve bothered the good sheriff long enough.”

Sam moved forward involuntarily.

“Sam, you wouldn’t leave without your things of course,” Josh’s mother interrupted smoothly. “I’m sure your father wouldn’t want you to go without them. Josh, go help Sam pack.”

Josh nudged Sam and the pair scrambled upstairs. Sam didn’t miss the way his father’s jaw clenched.

Upstairs in the guest room, Josh took him into his arms. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he sighed. “I just… I guess I didn’t think it would happen so soon. When he didn’t call right away I figured he was happy enough for you to stay here.”

“Yeah, no. Not my dad. Not allowed.” He made a face but kissed Josh. “Thank you, Josh. Thanks for everything.”

“You’re the one who saved me, Sam.”

“Yeah, but the past couple of weeks – week and a half – have been amazing. I’ve felt more… like a person, I guess… this week than I can remember ever feeling before. And it’s all because of you and your family. So thank you, Josh. You gave that to me.” He kissed him again, deeply this time.

Dean banged on the door. “Sammy, c’mon. How long can it take you to grab your crap and go? We need to be on the road!”

Josh made a face. “Nice to know they care.”

“Thanks again, Josh.”

“You too, Sam.” He grabbed Sam’s stack of clothes from the drawer.

“Here. Or they’ll get suspicious.”

“T-thanks.”

They left the room. “Jeez, what were you doing in there, making out? Dad’s pissed enough,” Dean muttered to him.

“I just have concerns – professional concerns – about releasing a young traumatized boy into the custody of a father who never reported him missing and who couldn’t be bothered to show up to collect him for a week and a half,” the sheriff pressed. “Maybe it would be in Sam’s best interests for him to stay with us until whatever your business is allows you to offer him more stability.”

John flushed scarlet, but he kept his face neutral. “Thanks for your concern. But I’ve known Sam for fifteen years now, and I’m pretty sure that I know what’s in his best interests. Thank you again for looking after him; I’m sorry he put you to so much trouble. Dean, take your brother outside and get him settled into the car.”

Dean grabbed his arm gently. “C’mon Sammy. Let’s get you out of here.” He guided him toward the door and out of it.

John followed after a few moments and got into his truck without a word to Sam. Dean offered him a rough smile and a “Good to have you back, Sammy” before turning on Zeppelin and following their father out to the highway.

They drove for three hours before finding a motel along highway 89 somewhere in Wyoming. Sam didn’t even bother paying attention to where they were; he just shivered in the front seat and tried to burrow under the pile of secondhand clothing.

They barely got into the room with the door closed behind them when John turned on Sam. “You had one job, you dumbass kid!” he seethed. “You couldn’t even do that right!”

“What was that, huh?” Sam shot back. “Die?”

John backhanded him. “Don’t you even think about talking back to me. Your job was to get in, infiltrate and get out. Not to sit on your pretty little ass for two weeks and then go in for some major heroics that make you stand out like a sore thumb! My God, how stupid can you be? This – this is why I can’t trust you. I could’ve trusted Dean with this.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t looking to get rid of Dean. You were looking to get rid of me. And where were you, John, that even strangers made better parents than you do?” He didn’t look at Dean. Whatever the look on Dean’s face would be, he knew that it wouldn’t be one he could take. Either betrayal or resentment. “The only way that I was going to ‘get out’ was by taking the whole thing out. Which you’d fucking know if you’d listened to a goddamn thing anyone else said.” John grabbed him by the lapels again. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Go ahead. Hit me again. It doesn’t change the facts.”

“I am your father, you ungrateful little –”

“Yeah, the father that abandoned me to a homicidal cult. Bang-up job you’re doing. It’s like I told you the last time I saw you, just kill me outright.”

John threw him onto the bed and stormed out the door. Dean just looked at him with disgust. “You never learn a thing, Sammy,” he said, sounding exhausted.

“Funny how I was the one who got abandoned to a homicidal cult but he’s the one who needs defending,” Sam spat.

Dean grabbed his jacket and followed his father.

Sam was alone. For the first time since his ordeal started, he managed to cry.


End file.
